A row of matte-black Vespas lined the entranceway; the soundtrack was (local) crowd-pleasing Italo-pop. It was almost as though Giorgio Armani wanted to remind us that he is the most Italian of designers. But he has also always been a man with an eye to the East, his own aesthetic proving quite compatible with Asia both creatively and commercially. And that's where Armani aimed his latest collection for Emporio. "East and West blending without exoticism or ethnic nostalgia" was the theme. In other words, no postcard romance, just a pragmatic distillation of what works in the global market right now. As usual with Armani, it was fascinating to see how extreme some of the results of that pragmatism were, starting from the ground up. Lug-soled brogues aren't necessarily a fresh proposition, but once you turn them into slingbacks, you're giving them a whole new slant.
If the color palette was classic Armani—sober grays, navys, taupes, and greiges, with accents of green damped down to tonally match the rest—the textures were tricky: leather jackets scarified by lasers; jackets and pants perforated, the fabric marked by tiny nicks. A jacket with the unstructured ease of a cardigan is an Armani staple, and that same softness was carried over into pieces cut from washed silk and linen. But the material the designer really seemed to favor was a papery leather bonded with georgette, which lent a starchiness to everything he used it for. Similarly, Armani picked up something as familiar as paisley and took it apart as a print, a jacquard, and an embroidery. That was where East met West: not so much decoration as dissection.
