The sun shone in Milan again for the concluding big show of the week, at Giorgo Armani. The designer held three performances of this collection (it’s usually two) in order to accommodate all the editors and clients who are in the city. Outside via Borgonuovo was crowded with people hoping to spot famous guests arriving, and around the corner a queue snaked down three sides of the Armani Hotel.
Armani called this collection Vibes, and showed it against a projected backdrop of cloudily diffuse waves of color. All of his models had late ’20s style (and Madonna’s ’90s revival) finger wave hairstyles, and sported looks often decorated by waves, shown in five or so phases, each punctuated by a subtle shift in lighting. The first section concentrated on an interplay between bronze metallic fabrics and silk grayish blue. As across the whole of the collection, looks were often cinched by belts in two or three strips of leather, cut to curve against or alongside each other.
Phase two shifted to Armani´s baseline blue, and starred a strapless dress gridded with woven rectangles of blue against a darker knit sheath. This was accessorized with two wave bangles worn mid-forearm and a tiny crossbody bag, as well as the flat-soled boxing boots that shod every look in this collection. As Armani pointed out to editors afterwards, he has long presented evening wear, whether with pants or skirted looks, atop flat shoes: he has no intention of wavering now.
The blue shifted to accommodate a conversation with marine green in a wave-buttoned kimono jacket. A trouser and vest-top in silk (blue again) was frothed with a foamy skirt of sheer wave-shaped panels that ran across the waist and broke at the left hip down towards the floor. The mood became darker via near-black looks that achieved their waviness sometimes simply through the reflection of Armani ́s spotlights against their fluid silky fabrics. Color broke via a waistcoat embroidered with gleaming shapes—maybe shells, maybe planets—in purples and blues. We entered a section that seemed adjacent to Emporio’s closing looks earlier in the week, its layered full skirts and sheathed pants insinuated with subtly glinting crystals and worn beneath hand-tooled harnesses and bustiers. One model wore no fewer than ten bangles on her right arm.
The final phase brought a wave of dusky pale pink to the foreground, with color accents drawn from the section before. Collarless jackets and long tulip skirts were colored and beaded with art deco reminiscent banks of rolling cloud shaped color. At the close Armani’s last model came out in a long and loosely fitted cloud dress with a crystal-inset sporty neckline, from which was draped a floor-length sheer shawl inset with more points of reflection. With Isadora Duncan verve she swooshed and twirled as she made her way down to the photographers, with a sketch of her look projected up onto the wall behind her. Mr. Armani came out to applause and waved: it was a vibe.