For tonight’s coed Giorgio Armani show we moved across Via Bergognone to the Armani Silos, the sprawling exhibition complex the designer opened pretty much at the same time that Prada opened its Fondazione in 2015. Titled Rhapsody in Blue, the collection was a languid exploration of smoky reliefs and pencil-sharp silhouettes played out on a dark mirrored runway.
With the occasional exception of a padded velvet overcoat over a hammered silk shirt (in blue), or a chevron-etched suede bomber (in blue) or a large-hooded piumino over a pant of puckered crushed velvet (blue too), the menswear here—via a section of luxury utilitywear accented by leather-framed safety goggles—mostly stayed true to the key architecture that Armani both revolutionized and revived: suiting. It went from an opening section of Vitruvian-precise double-breasteds into a loose trousered flirtation with single-breasted jackets into a blue-busting section of black tuxedos.
The more exuberant ornamentation came in the womenswear. Atop pants cut slim or with jodhpur eruptions at the quad, Armani served a pre-millennial nightclub’s worth of smoky whorl and twist. From the bunched swirls of leather on the square-toed boots to the glinting shivers of midnight blue pattern under mesh on jerkin tops, or the hard exhalations of leather ruffle on handbag straps, or the meandering back-and-forths of leather peplum, this was an overwhelmingly dark collection packed with playful decoration. Bow-belted pleated pants were served south of a silk shirt in shifting clouds of midnight blue. A double-ruffled leather collar furled forth from the neckline of a leather-piped black velvet jacket. The swirls slowly settled into abstract flowers etched in purple beads or mirrored enamel, before an evening section featuring one multitiered narrow-cut gown but which focused mostly on velvet pants and extravagantly decorated one-shoulder tops.
