The essence of haute couture

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Milanese haute couture , a new chapter. On May 20, the Armani/Silos exhibition venue in Milan will open the exhibition “Giorgio Armani Privé 2005-2025”, which celebrates the twentieth anniversary of its birth, following the fashion show last January in Paris, in the spaces of the building on rue François premier. Open to the public from the following day until the end of the year, it will feature around one hundred and fifty creations personally chosen by the designer, who did not want external curators. Moreover, the exhibition is part of a year full of celebrations, given the coincidence with the tenth anniversary of Armani/Silos and the fiftieth anniversary of the company's foundation .

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Yet, when Armani wanted to debut in haute couture, many were perplexed by this decision: how could the incarnation of prêt-à-porter, the living symbol of democratic dressing, of intuitions that enter into everyday life and facilitate it, the designer who dressed career women and sold millions of jeans with the eagle, convert to an aristocratic, exclusive and excluding language, to illuminate inaccessible events and the immense wardrobes of ladies with unlimited economic availability? No one said it openly, but the feeling that was spreading was that of a betrayal. At that time, working alongside him in communications and major events, such as the impressive exhibitions organized at the Guggenheim in Bilbao or at the Baths of Diocletian, was the journalist Adriana Mulassano, a former great signature of the “Corriere della Sera”, who today recalls: “He repeated all his life that he would not do high fashion, he said he was not capable of it, that he could not do it… I, instead, answered him: “One day you will be forced to do it, because when the differentiation is so great towards the bottom, (see Emporio, A/X, the jeans line, ed.) you have to adapt the offer in the other direction as well”. “Come on”, he replied”. And instead .

Why, then, could an eminently practical man like Armani not resist the temptation of the sophistication of complex embroidery and constructions that require a magical manual skill? The clothes that closed his shows were already limited edition pieces and as expensive as a custom-built car, so most people couldn't see any sense in the operation. Surely, it was a choice of freedom. In production there is always someone who points out how every detail, even a profiled buttonhole, corresponds to an increase in the final cost: a designer who has always had to deal with the concept of the general public and who knows the production criteria perfectly, cannot help but be sensitive to this aspect. Couture, therefore, as an enclosure in which everything is permitted, even allowing oneself unlimited creativity: almost unreal manual skill and craftsmanship, citations and allusions to art, to the customs of other countries, rarefactions and challenges that are unthinkable in clothing . It has been like this since its debut in Paris on January 24, 2005, in a loft on rue Lauriston. Freedom, fun.

Those who work alongside Armani (known to all as “Mr. Armani”) confirm that when the work schedule includes designing or perfecting the Privé collection, the atmosphere at Via Borgonuovo 11 is more suspended, unreal: there is the usual sacred silence that is required during work, amplified by the amazement and admiration that garments that have required up to 900 hours of work instinctively inspire.

Different, and eloquent, is also the atmosphere that reigns at the Armani Privé fashion shows. For a Sophia Loren or a Cate Blanchett who inevitably attract the attention of the press and photographers, the rest of the audience is populated by ladies who are perhaps anonymous to most, but are there because they are loyal customers: in the front row sit the Arab and Chinese customers, who represent the two most relevant markets for this collection. Very often, and this is an interesting fact, they are the daughters of historical customers .

This last fact allows for two considerations. The first is that Armani has won, in fact, the bet of couture that initially raised some doubts in those who admired him as the king of prêt-à-porter. The designer has registered a generational change and perceived that the highest level of clothing was approached by girls who had indeed grown up among the rustling of Balenciaga or Chanel dresses by their mothers but who, unlike their demanding mothers, were attracted by a less pompous, less baroque, less high-sounding language, while not wanting to give up perfection and quality. To one of his collaborators who asked him if a jacket wasn't more beautiful with a button instead of a zip, an element that doesn't come to mind first when talking about the elements that make up a haute couture creation, the designer is said to have replied: "Our clients dress themselves, they don't have someone to help them do it" . The awareness of dressing women who do not live in Downton Abbey, with personal maids who help them put on or take off even gloves, is a crucial element in Armani's strategy. That this is a very concrete couture is also demonstrated by the presence, already from the second show, of numerous daytime looks that re-propose in a precious key those jackets, those tops, those trousers that constitute his lexicon.

And the second consideration is purely aesthetic. When Armani Privé debuted, haute couture was going through a period of profound tiredness and a fine dust cloud – golden, mind you, but dust nonetheless – had settled on the sartorial and production efforts of the few surviving maisons : Karl Lagerfeld was adamant at Chanel, John Galliano was pushing the boundaries at Dior, Donatella Versace was concentrating on ready-to-wear and the Atelier collection was no longer the pyrotechnic creative laboratory that her brother Gianni was so passionate about, Dolce & Gabbana had not yet started sending their meticulous but often redundant postcards from Italy. Elsewhere, then, theatrical ideas were opted for – otherwise known as half-hearted clowning among the workers – useful for gaining a few seconds of visibility on the lunchtime news.

Thus, the arrival of Armani demonstrated how it was and still is possible to have a high fashion that combines elaborate workmanship, old-fashioned attention to detail, sartorial solutions that are unfortunately noticed and understood by an increasingly small audience, and an image of extreme clarity, with silhouettes as clean and sharp as an ink stroke: it is like in dance, where every effort is hidden by an unrivaled grace. A couture of subtraction that launched a trend, as healthy as fasting after binge eating . A few years later, as if it were an assist between minimalist colleagues, Raf Simons also followed this path for the otherwise opulent and kaleidoscopic couture of Dior: approaching the poetry of the founder, he too demonstrated, unfortunately with a reduced following, how it was possible to present elements of the highest fashion on clothes that to a less attentive eye might seem banal and unadorned.

Both on the red carpet and on the catwalk, the collection is now a restful certainty if not a refuge: no surprises or oddities are expected, but one is guaranteed to find oneself in front of an idea of ​​measured, reasonable, flattering fashion. And it seems that the sometimes excessive requests of the stylists are not appreciated, whose excessive power Mr. Armani tends to consider just right, that is, relatively little: their requests for changes that would distort the image of the dress are declined or contained with polite firmness. Only one exception was observed, and the one who asked for a dress that we could define as galactic for a Grammy Awards ceremony was Lady Gaga .

Two decades of experimentation (even with unusual materials, such as horsehair). From top left, clockwise: an Armani Privé summer 2012 outing (photo Randy Brooke) and related sketch (courtesy Giorgio Armani). Drawing of a grand evening dress from the winter 2006 collection and a look from the winter 2011 show (photo SGP)

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