Emporio Armani - spring 2009

Giorgio Armani's growing appetite for eccentricity knows few bounds as he charges on through life. His Emporio collection offers him a wide platform to indulge it, if only because it's more relaxed than his signature line—he gets to mix things up a little more. Here, there were shoes that looked like spats next to cowl-necked waistcoats that closed diagonally (Bugsy Malone meets A Flock of Seagulls), or a mandarin-collared top sharing catwalk space with wide-cuffed ciré shorts, or crinkled ginghams and harem pants. Armani even offered an homage to Chanel in unstructured cotton tweeds. The models had spiked, blonded hair; some of them were branded with the Armani eagle logo. The somewhat pell-mell nature of proceedings suggested the polyglot society depicted in Blade Runner, a replicant culture where bits and pieces of the past and present are boiled together to make the future. One could almost wish that Armani would push the notion even further and produce an entirely post-apocalyptic collection. The kite surfers that marched down the catwalk at show's end were much too polite.

by tim blanks

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