There’s a great scene in American Psycho—the book, not the film—where the antihero Patrick Bateman argues, above the throbbing music of a U2 concert no less, what precisely differentiates Emporio from plain Armani. The grays of Emporio, he says, are muted and so are the taupes and navys. “Definite winged lapels, subtle plaids, polka dots, and stripes are Armani. Not Emporio.”
That’s interesting because it taps into what Giorgio Armani was thinking about for this Emporio show: identity. He demarcated the opening and closing look with a fingerprint, kind of like the touch recognition icon on an iPhone. As that American Psycho passage testifies, Armani’s identity is one of the best-established in the fashion canon, albeit one of the subtlest. And the most important thing you can have in fashion right now is an identity. Amongst a surfeit of product, that’s what will encourage consumers to eschew other brands offering similar stuff, at similar price points, manufactured in the same factories, and choose you over them.
Giorgio Armani has an identity that has helped to shape our modern perception of menswear. It proves so potent that he’s spun out multiple iterations—his main line, Collezioni, Jeans, EA7, and Emporio, the oldest bar his eponymous label. This Emporio collection was looking to define the code and substance of the brand, which has changed somewhat since Patrick Bateman so vehemently defined it in the early ’90, but not all that much. There were still muted grays and navys, the latter more than the former; indeed, it dominated this show. As always, there was a plurality—Armani never demands his man go naked outside of the boardroom or gymnasium, instead proposing clothes for every facet of life. The sportswear was the flashiest, or at least as flashy as Armani ever gets, imprinted with those forensic fingertip markings or with facets of the Armani eagle logo, blown vastly out of proportion to render it almost abstract. Bags were embroidered with military patches, another means of identity.
The collection was best when Armani considered what the Emporio identity should be right now, when he imbued his suiting with the lightness of sportswear, offering papery overcoats in his signature subtle beiges, simple sweaters, and the wide easy trousers so emblematic of his style, but that seem to be cropping up all over this season. You could imagine the lethally chic Bateman taking to them with aplomb.
