Leave it to Giorgio Armani to pack a little star power into his couture front row, as Kate Hudson, Laura Dern, Emma Thompson, Sydney Sweeney and Camille Razat showed up for his latest couture Armani Privé collection in Paris on Tuesday night.
A bold face name group that suddenly had to rush into the show-space as an intense downpour scattered hundreds of fans and led to a mini stampede by the stars.
Though instead of west to Hollywood, Giorgio looked east this season for inspiration. Armani has always had a love of far eastern cultures, but this season it felt like he had set up an atelier in Shanghai.
His first six looks were pans suits – harem pants coupled with a very fine series of dramatic jackets in pebbly wool or silvery shantung, often finished with fabric roses. The leitmotif of this collection.
As he moved into evening, he embroidered mesh jackets in fabric peonies, plum blossoms and lotus flowers, while his models wore intricately woven Mikado hairdos.
And in a superlative display by his atelier, Armani’s team embroidered pagodas and temples onto faille jackets and redingotes. True couture collectors’ creations.
A hyper polished show staged inside a beige rectangle space built inside the Gare des Invalides, a former Air France building now used for runway shows, and located right next door to France’s foreign ministry, the Quai d’Orsay.
A moment light years away from France’s recent unrest, which so far has not disrupted a single life event after two full days of haute couture in Paris.
Giorgio also went a little over the top with his bags – showing several triple clutches held together by chains, the last of which was, of course, in red.
Armani always does couture on his own terms. Like his bride. Traditionally la mariée or bride who closes all serious couture shows wears white. Giorgio dressed his in dragon flame red.
And it being Paris couture, Giorgio entitled the collection, ‘Le Temps des Roses’.
“A carnal, seductive and mysterious bloom of roses…A journey from the west to the east through elongated silhouettes, for a collection revisiting, without romantic cliches, the most emblematic flower ever,” opined Armani, who will celebrate his 89th birthday one week from today.
It has become de rigueur these days at all Armani shows for the audience to give the octogenarian designer a standing ovation. They did again in Paris tonight. The wise king of Milanese fashion enjoying every clap, milking it for all it is worth. Still the man, 48 years after founding his own house.
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