PARIS (AP) — Armani Privé opened Tuesday underneath an unmistakable shadow. For the primary time within the 20-year historical past of his couture home, Giorgio Armani was not current in Paris to take his bow.
Days from his 91st birthday and following medical doctors’ recommendation after a latest hospital keep, Armani reportedly oversaw the Paris couture week present remotely from house, a second of absence that lands closely for a designer who has formed each one in all his model’s collections since its founding.
The present’s theme, “Seductive Black,” performed out with literal and symbolic power on the runway: black in myriad varieties, from liquid velvet and lacquered silk to pavé crystals and flashes of gold. Even the fashions’ make-up adopted swimsuit, rendered in shades of grey.
For some within the entrance row, the relentless palette felt pointed. Visitors quietly puzzled if the selection of black was a coded message from the maestro himself.
Armani missed Milan, too
This isn’t the primary main present Armani has missed this season. Simply weeks in the past, he was pressured to take a seat out Milan Vogue Week for the primary time within the label’s historical past, following a short hospitalization.
In accordance with the model, the absence was a precaution to avoid wasting vitality for his Paris couture look.
For many years, Armani — also known as “Re Giorgio,” or King George, in Italy — has been each the inventive and enterprise power behind one in all vogue’s final nice impartial empires.
The Tuesday assortment balanced pressure and management. After an unsure begin, together with velvet jodhpurs and stark crystalline seams, Armani’s acquainted codes rapidly emerged: tuxedo jackets remodeled into night robes with plunging lapels and floating bow ties, tailor-made blazers worn on naked pores and skin and military-inspired equestrian jackets paired with slim velvet pants.
Bursts of embroidery and coloured feathers offered a stability from the monochrome.
A residing vogue ma
estro
Armani’s latest absences have despatched ripples by means of the business. In a panorama dominated by conglomerates like LVMH and Kering, Armani stays the only shareholder of his firm, personally overseeing each assortment for almost 50 years. In 2024, Armani Group reported revenues of $2.5 billion, whereas Giorgio Armani’s private fortune is estimated at $11–13 billion — whilst the worldwide luxurious market faces headwinds.
Armani is extensively credited with redefining males’s and girls’s tailoring, pioneering gender-fluidity in vogue, and inventing movie star red-carpet dressing, from Julia Roberts to Cate Blanchett. But the designer himself has acknowledged that age is now a actuality to take care of and that pulling again may very well be a necessity.
Whether or not the monochrome assortment was a deliberate metaphor or just a showcase of self-discipline, “Seductive Black” felt private — each a temper and a message, maybe an understated nod to a grasp whose presence, even in absence, stays absolute. Because the present closed, the ultimate bow belonged to the fashions alone. However Armani’s imaginative and prescient — uncompromising and unmistakably his — stuffed the room.
