Searching for Rebirth at Emporio Armani

LONDON, United Kingdom — Emporio Armani's show in London on Sunday night was presented as the fulcrum of a symbolic rebirth for the brand. The EA shop was reopening on Bond Street, the EA magazine was relaunching after two decades, and, at the same time, the company was announcing the three winners of a competition it underwrote with the British Fashion Council to find and support new design talent.

So it was a shame that, with all this new energy elsewhere, there was no halo effect for the collection itself. It was shown in a warehouse on Tobacco Wharf, miles in the East End. Once upon a time, that might have gelled with the EA collection, which, as those old issues of the magazine made clear, never shied away from the kind of adventures that intrepid men and women might have. But there wasn't even a hint of grit here (well, maybe a couple – a desert rat parka for him, a fitted red leather jacket for her). It was all sheer pink and lilac and palest turquoise chiffon, and cap sleeves and girlish dropped waists, and boyishly suit-y sobriety.

It actually began promisingly enough, with a passage of pop graphics that made their way into dense jacquards. But they turned terminally cute with crab’n’blowfish motifs writ large. You instinctively felt an edit could isolate the strengths of the collection (there were 100 looks in the show!), except that Armani’s profligacy has often worked in his favour, because the diamonds shine brightest when they’re surrounded by dross. But it was an effort to find the diamonds here. Does it sound reductive to say that the male mary janes were a straight-up winner? That Armani is still capable of mutating the familiar? Does it also sound reductive to say that nothing serves him better than navy blue? Here, everything was so light, in style and substance, that it just floated away. Maybe that’s a kind of rebirth, but surely not the one Armani himself would hope for.