Milan Day Six: Giorgio The Great

MILAN — A celebration fit for a king: The final day of Milan Fashion Week was entirely focussed on Giorgio Armani. It was an emotional closure.

Armani’s show was held in the magnificent courtyard of the Accademia di Brera rather than one of the brand’s usual venues. It would have been special in any case: Initially planned as a 50th anniversary celebration for the label, the show was accompanied by a retrospective exhibition titled “Giorgio Armani: Milano, per amore” in the Pinacoteca di Brera museum. The exhibition displays an expansive selection of dresses taken from five decades of Armani’s collections, displayed in dialogue with masterpieces by Caravaggio, Raffaello Sanzio and others.

Mr. Armani, however, passed away on Sept. 4. So the proceedings took a different turn: a heartfelt homage to the designer and entrepreneur who, together with his contemporaries (all gone with the exception of Valentino Garavani) forged the very notion of Italian style. Of that vanguard of pioneers, Armani was the one who most successfully breached popular culture, becoming a household name like Coca-Cola for everyone, not just fashionistas. This happened for a multiplicity of reasons: Armani’s wonderfully direct way with words, his ability to communicate across cultures and language barriers; his strong ties with the cinema world; his will to offer products to everyone.

Like the exhibition, the show was a celebration and recapitulation of everything that makes Armani Armani: the spare, soulful style, the star-studded audience, the ability to Armani-fy everything he touched. Brera’s colonnade itself turned into a very Armani ambiance — with soft light suffused by lanterns and a beige-and-white damier runway covering the cobblestones. As composer Ludovico Einaudi performed live at the piano his song “Nuvole Bianche” — the same composition that played in the chapel during “King Giorgio”’s public viewing — the show paraded a veritable panoply of Armani-isms in front of an audience that included Richard Gere, Lauren Hutton, Spike Lee, Samuel L Jackson, Cate Blanchett and so many more. They were all there, silent and attentive, to pay their respects to the designer who had dressed them in pivotal moments of their careers, making them look like themselves, but better. That, in a nutshell, was Armani’s unquestionable gift.

Swinging between the grey palette of Milano to the blues, browns and floating lines evoking Pantelleria (the island Armani cherished between Sicily and Africa) the collection was another iteration of the house’s well-established codes. A particularly beautiful one, which history made look like a testament.

From now on, the Armani style can only be interpreted. Its author is no longer with us. As Silvana Armani and Leo Dell’Orco took the final bow, it was clear a new cycle had begun. There was a standing ovation, but no tears. Everybody held their feelings inside, which is very Armani, too.

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