Giorgio Armani laid his cards on the table this afternoon with a collection entitled All in. Before the show began, he shuffled the setup at his Via Bergognone fashion Teatro into a three-aisle runway split. Then he dealt us 96 looks (two of them combined in one hand) of high-stakes womenswear.
There were playing-card motifs running through the collection. Silk skirts, shirts, and scarves; chiffon puff-ball dresses and culottes; wool jacquard pants; and velvet jacquard suiting were all patterned with a scattered-card print, which, when deconstructed into an angular pattern, looked Gio Ponti–esque. Later, Armani inserted embellished playing-card embroideries into black looks, so a pair peeked from beneath the wide belt of a full-skirted poplin dress or from the top pocket of a croupier-sharp black jacket. One black bomber was decked out with cards of all suits plus an Armani eagle joker. Elsewhere, he used the heart as an expressive emblem at the left hip of a sensationally scarlet jacket and as a black velvet chest piece worn beneath a silk waistcoat whose breast pocket featured more cards. A collarless pale silk jacket was patterned with spades and more eagles. One wool coat was embroidered with the face cards.
These gentle thematics suggested Armani was hustling his woman to take a risk and gamble on bold approaches to dressing. In Look 62, his king and queen wore royally lush coats of black shearling, which, along with faux fur, has been by far and away the most popular bet across all the shows this Milan season. Finely fringed tops, horsehair shoes and tailoring, and some fur-ish cheetah-pattern looks near the start were a wager on texture. Jackets and pants in semiopaque liquid-finish fabrics hazed with blue swirls and crystal-set black dresses with body-mapping grids of lace were sure things. You can always bet on Giorgio Armani.
