It was late summer in 1975 when a young man named Leo Dell’Orco met up with a friend and his dog to go for a stroll in the gardens of Piazzale Libia in Milan. As they strolled they encountered another dog, off the leash, “wandering around alone.” So they searched for and found its owner. He thanked them, and introduced himself. His name was Giorgio Armani.
That wandering dog first led Dell’Orco toward where he is today: head of men’s collections for the Emporio and Giorgio Armani labels, and a chief custodian of the legacy and business of Mr. Armani himself, who died almost five months ago. Dell’Orco tells that story of their meeting, and many others, in an excellent new interview with Corriere della Sera fashion editor Paola Pollo. There he also shares his state of mind about shouldering the responsibility—alongside Armani’s niece Silvana, who oversees womenswear—for what will appear on Armani’s runways in the seasons ahead.
“He wrote an important chapter in the history of fashion,” said Dell’Orco of Armani, “and we feel this responsibility. It’s scary, yes. No one will be able to replicate what he did; no one will be able to become him. As he said, we’re all little Armanis, each with our own responsibilities, Silvana the woman, and I the man: we’ll see how it goes. We’ll give it our all."
This afternoon Dell’Orco presented the first menswear collection ever shown under the Giorgio Armani label that bears no direct design involvement from Giorgio Armani himself. It should come as no surprise that Dell’Orco’s “debut” was absolutely not a revolution. The show was held in Giorgio Armani’s house (shared for decades with Dell’Orco), on Giorgio Armani’s runway, in an atmosphere scented with the ionized tang of Giorgio Armani’s swimming pool.
The show opened with an expansive symphony of soft tailoring in a kaleidoscope of greige and charcoal. Jackets were cut maybe a smidgen higher than of late, and delivered overwhelmingly without vents, but they fell from the shoulder with the house’s trademark liquid flow. Models occasionally fiddled with their accessories—removing spectacles quizzically or tapping their unworn kidskin gloves against one thigh—as they walked. There was a diamond pattern story gently told through the pattern on pants, the quilting on bags, and the envelope-style side pocket of a work satchel. Certain menswear looks— such as the absolutely masterful 36—were accompanied by womenswear equivalents, a nod ahead to the coed Emporio Armani show we will see in Milan next month. There was a lot of long double-breasted outerwear—in velvet, printed “fur,” suede shearling—that hung down at a left to right angle across the body.
An intermission onrush of velvet pocketed ski parkas, navy fedoras and patterned knits from the alpine Neve line marked the start of a second phase in which Dell’Orco ventured gently off-piste. Following a brown-toned opening that starred an apogee articulation of a shawl collar shearling coat, we saw a trio of outerwear in relatively un-Armanian purple and, in the case of one shearling, fitted almost slim against the body. There was a his and hers duo of fringed, striped, and belted wrap cardigans co-developed with Alanui, the first flagged collaboration I can recall ever seeing here. There were two wonderful suits in a semi-sheer velvet ingeniously crushed to reflect the light in a chaotic corduroy of splintered stripes. Four closing coed duos of black and white evening looks reined in these gently unconventional canters, before Dell’Orco and his nephew Gianluca, who is his uncle’s right hand and head of the Armani’s menswear style office, took their bow.
After the show, guests were invited upstairs into the private apartments Armani shared with Dell’Orco, and where Dell’Orco still lives. After gamely glad-handing guests including Heated Rivalry’s Hudson Williams, who at 24 is two years older than Dell’Orco was on the day of that fateful dog-walk, Dell’Orco said: “It’s impossible to try and even get close to him. But I tried to add something: maybe I was a bit more eccentric with certain colors; the purples, the greens, and the iridescence. Maybe Giorgio would have cut them, or had them a little darker, but I wanted a little shine. And I wanted to bring the proportions back just a little bit, more close to the body. So yes, shapes that caress the body.”
He added: “I certainly don’t want to make a revolution. But I will try and be a little bit more personal, expressing what I know and I like, with lightness.”
