Armani and Zegna close the fashion week of recovery and (cautious) optimism

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“What is modern?” you ask Giorgio Armani at the end of the flagship line show. He is radiant: for the Italian basketball championship won with Olympia Milano – the entire team is present, in the audience – and for a fashion show that is yet another affirmation of the validity of a style of unshakable coherence but of no rigidity. “There is no univocal definition, and that’s fine – he adds -. For some it is modern the black and sharp tailored suit, for me it is mixing classic garments in an unusual way, with the very long shirt that emerges from the jacket, the geometric patterns combined freely, the tie that practically disappears and the shoes that become espadrilles “.

The collection is reassuring in its being a concentrate of Armanism, in the slight deconstruction traversed by desert echoes, vacationers, Pantelleria, but it also shows a new exuberance, which is just one way: the ease of wearing the garments as if at random, and with the same nonchalance as a pajama. “Classic Armani, with sympathy”, summarizes King Giorgio, effective as never before.

There is a lot of ease, and a fresh and timely spirit of synthesis, from Etro. Kean Etro signs for the last time the men’s collection of the brand – the helm now passes into the hands of Marco De Vincenzo – focusing on a simplicity full of eroticism: immediate clothes, many of which are impalpable and transparent, crossed by floral motifs of Japanese ancestry . Via the dandyisms, the eccentricities and the find, he strips everything to a minimum to maximize the effect, that is to glorify the body in its tonic, moist carnality.

The collection born from the complicity between Alessandro Michele and Harry Styles is surprisingly precise, albeit tinged with playful provocations: a one-off project that goes under the insolent label Gucci HA HA HA, presented in the historic vintage shop Cavalli & Nastri. The setting is very relevant, so much so that it is difficult to distinguish the pieces in the collection from the vintage assortment. Michele has never made any secret of his nostalgic passions; his aesthetic owes much to the magnificent metissage of the shops of the Roman via del Government Vecchio. Styles, for his part, has the same passion for vintage and clothes. The result is happy: a mix of Tommy Nutter tailoring, childish prints and decorative trinkets.

And Prada, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons instead focus on reality, whatever it may be in the context of fashion, and work on clothes to wear, on an idea of ​​apparent normality, which, due to an innate tendency to overwhelming idealization, they ascribe to a process of continuous choice . The collection is called Prada Choices, in fact. To design, of course, is to choose, at least as much as dressing is, day after day. The choice now is to focus on archetypes, on single pieces, from the Baracuta-type jacket to the raincoat, from jeans to the smock, using a double base as a frame: the black tailored dress, certainly dear to the Lady, and the shorts skin, also black, closer to Simons’ sensitivity. The result is a collection of magnificent product slammed in the face like the jewels displayed on the velvet bases in the shop windows: an exercise in reduction and concreteness perfectly executed but cold as an experiment conducted in vitro. The tendency towards self-quotation remains, dangerous but reassuring, while the usual infantilism shows no sign of disappearing and then the concreteness fades into the utopia of eternal youth.