. Formal and relaxed silhouettes fused as traditional suits were broken up and new takes on conventional dress codes created, tailored to a time Armani believes is made for rule-breaking. “I think we have all learned to be informal and more relaxed in the way we dress,” as the designer told Anders Christian Madsen before the show.How does it feel to be returning to live shows?
Returning to live shows after so many months of showing in a virtual format is stimulating. It’s like finally being back to doing my job as it should be done.I am not sure if this is the future of fashion, what I know is that what we went through over the past months has been a terrible experience but one that came with a lesson. I think we have learned that we can communicate fashion in a different way.
The one thing that I would like to change about the system is the overproduction of ‘stuff’; of clothing, of events, of unnecessary things. That really was the main change that I was hoping to see after this pandemic turmoil. But probably, although we all wanted things to change at the beginning, we quickly forgot about those initial good intentions. What I’m seeing now is different and things are almost back to what they were.
I am a man of habit, but the pandemic has taught me some very important lessons. The main one is that you cannot really plan too much in advance. I don’t mind admitting that I am a control freak, I always needed to plan everything way in advance. But what the pandemic did was to disrupt all of our plans. So, we had to learn to have one look on the long term and another look on the short term, trying to make the best of both.
Not really. I still deny any rumours about the merging with a car company and this kind of rumours may affect my business, although not too much. To continue with the driving metaphor, I’m still the one at the driving seat. I have built all this over 40 years of [my] career, and I have made specific and detailed plans for the future. So, there is no need for people to stress out.