Backstage, pre-show, Giorgio Armani was focused on last-minute adjustments: tugging a gray abstracted check shoulder clean of a crocodile backpack strap, undoing the bottom five buttons of a vest so that it showed the knit beneath, rejecting a jacket last minute in favor of a cashmere vest over a sleeveless zip-up mock turtleneck. “It’s a memory of everything beautiful that has been done in the past,” he observed of the collection he was fine-tuning. “Lots of different atmospheres.”
The shearling aviator caps clutched by a couple of models—one in a brown crocodile jacket, the other in a rugged blue-tinted gray velvet overcoat—were the most literal clue to one of the atmospheres this collection navigated. Baggy combat pants in fluffed mohair checks, velvet corduroy, and subtly jacquarded or plain wool blends, or loose pin-tucked non-combats were either poppered at the hem or tucked into socks over tractor-soled, single-strapped, 10-hole boots. Longhair shearling duffle coats with patches, ridged black leather blousons, patinated calf aviators, and velvet great coats were just a few elements in an eclectic squadron of substantial outerwear sent out with crocodile or calf flying gloves.
In tailoring there were a few semi-conventional sorties in executivewear: A group of blue suits with a slightly more defined shoulder were cut in the narrow, eight-button, notch-lapel, double-breasted jacket shape that ran through this collection—sometimes in deconstructed cashmere, sometimes in complicated fabrications including a flocked check. These looks were placed above single monk strap shoes with squared-off but rounded corner panels. The show closed with a line of velvet evening suits in blue, black, and bottle green whose satin-fronted notch/shawl hybrid collars were popped as kind of integrated cravats. This gently innovative intervention was typical of a beautifully fabricated collection that allowed only the most calculated stylistic diversions to threaten any turbulence to the undisturbed smoothness of its flight path.
