Story by Editor-at-Large Carolina Ogliaro
At the Emporio Armani Milan Fashion Week show, the idea of “Maestro” is about harmony. This season, the brand, long conceived as a space where masculine and feminine exist in fluid dialogue, stages its thesis inside an imagined music school, where she and he study to become conductors. The metaphor is quintessential. Conducting, after all, is about balance: rule and improvisation, discipline and instinct. In the first collection jointly developed by Silvana Armani and Leo Dell’Orco, menswear and womenswear share the same score, reaffirming the Armani principle that structure and softness are partners.
British formality with tailcoats, waistcoats, caps, provides the opening movement, though it is filtered through an Italian sensibility that loosens the posture without abandoning rigor. The silhouettes are vertical yet pliant; shoulders neat, never severe; proportions calibrated to suggest motion. The vocabulary is familiar: trench coats, enveloping overcoats, focus jackets, long cardigans, generous shirts slipping over cropped trousers in a tailoring rewrite that feels both studied and instinctive. Bermuda shorts cut with deep pleats interrupt the cadence, while denim appears like a recurring refrain, treated with the same respect as tweed or wool-linen blends.
There is texture everywhere (jaspé, chenille, worn leather, long-haired shearling), materials chosen for tactility. The palette moves in a controlled gradient from beige and greige into a spectrum of browns, punctuated by Armani blue and flickers of red and violet, like notes breaking through a muted composition. Small crests nod to club culture and house history; crystal embroideries fall like rain across otherwise sober surfaces.
And then, at the close, white shirts and black ties. Impeccable, stripped back, almost severe. Modernity was not engineered through disruption, but rather distilled through a strong focus. At Emporio Armani, the codes are never overturned but recalibrated. Tradition is not discarded in pursuit of relevance but adjusted, sleeve by sleeve, proportion by proportion, until it reflects the present moment.
