Three-quarters of the way through, Giorgio Armani got to the point of his Armani Privé show: a section of the dresses that have made him the original Hollywood red carpet dominator. The thing about the embellished bustier dress with its billowing ball skirt and the ’30s-via-’90s slip embellished with tiers of scalloped beading is that they both conform to the unwritten rule book of Oscar convention. The fact that they’re not so complicated as to overwhelm someone’s face and personality is the key—presumably it’s frightening enough to walk out in front of everyone, in sight of cameras, without feeling that your clothes might somehow get in the way of who you are. Armani’s museum, which houses his archive at the Silos in Milan, is full of such dresses.
When the rest of this collection is filed away in that archive, it will surely be labeled his “mauve” season. A disagreement broke out between North American and English journalists about how to pronounce this color—the U.S. says “morv” and the U.K. says “mowve.” (Who knew?) Anyhow, what everybody saw along the way were semitransparent shorts and flounce-cuffed trousers, a range of camisoles and bustiers in experimental shapes, and a couple of zip-front jackets, all in the same palette. The only point at which Armani deviated from the color scheme was when he added slick black sequins, some shooting downward in a sunray pattern from a trapeze top, and the others in a finale dress with a single strap constructed in the shape of a rippling fan. When Armani went for simple drama, the effects won out best.
