For Giorgio Armani, the big reset has made a big impact. “Personally, I have learned to enjoy things more and to work day by day, not planning too much ahead nor stressing too much. And I have to admit, it’s been very healthy for me,” he wrote in an email before his first show with an audience since February 2020. Those were significant words for a self-declared control freak, and the impulse we’ve seen from Armani over the last year has been a great color on him. This collection was no exception.
Rather than going back to where he left off—the monolithic HQ Teatro that seats 800—he invited 80 people to where it all began: his own home, and former headquarters, on Via Borgonuovo 21, where some of his most legendary shows took place. (You know it was important to him because he had put up with set builders and sound rehearsals intruding on his domestic idyll for two weeks leading up to it.) Back in the day, Armani would host shows in the palazzo’s underground runway room, an early blueprint for the Teatro with 300 seats and an adjacent one-lane swimming pool for morning laps.
In the courtyard’s Japanese garden, steps away from Silvio Pasotti’s mural of a shirtless Armani immortalized alongside his 20th-century contemporaries (Yves Saint Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld, Liza Minelli), he showcased what his distilled mindset means for the Armani wardrobe: subtle, supple, sophisticated, and a little bit sexy. Presenting the collection on a model cast that felt more directional than usual, he deconstructed his formal silhouette and loosened sharp lines with a sense of what ‘sportswear’ looked like before the mid-century. Maybe that’s what formalwear looks like in the 21st?
The sensibility was casual without crossing into the territory of lazy. “The overall attitude is very light, because I think we have all learned to be informal and more relaxed in the way we dress,” Armani explained. He took a stance against the conventional suit, offering new generations—as well as old—an updated dress code to live by: “Reimagined, so it is no longer composed of a blazer and a pair of trousers.” Now, Armani believes that a ‘suit’ can just as well be a shirt and a trouser in matching fabric, or a generational blouson-and-trouser combo.