Milan bids farewell to Giorgio Armani at 50th-anniversary show

​Milan, fashion and a legion of movie stars bid farewell to Giorgio Armani at his 50th-anniversary show on Sunday evening, the final collection created by the legendary designer.

 
Presented 24 days after his passing on September 4, the show was staged inside the city’s most important museum, the Pinacoteca di Brera. Post-show, guests were treated to a new exhibition – “Giorgio Armani, Milano, Per Amore” – where classic looks by the designer were placed among masterpieces of Renaissance art.

The collection marked the last ever designed by Armani, and leave it to Giorgio to go out on a high, with brilliantly fresh, light and contemporary tailoring.

Set in the grand neo-classical courtyard of the Pinacoteca, illuminated by tea-lights, the show was beautifully staged. Armani would surely have been proud at how well his house and team had performed.
 
Made in supremely light silks, dry linens and printed cottons, Armani cut beautiful pajama suits for men, and breezy tunics and boleros for women. Fashion’s greatest tailor inventing new dhoti pants and deconstructed blazers again. He referenced his island home in sunny Pantelleria in the color palette: burnt sand, lava, stone and sea blue. 

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For evening, he looked east with beautiful pantsuits in velvet and plissé silk in deep purple, sapphire and azure. All the cast in flats, walking solemnly around the space as Einaudi’s “Divenire” defined the mood.
 
As the final look passed on Giorgio’s mannequin de cabine and muse Agnes Zogla, the entire audience of 700 rose in a standing ovation.
 
Led by Cate Blanchett, Glenn Close, Spike Lee, Lauren Hutton and Richard Gere, reminders of Giorgio’s unique collection to cinema. The Milan designer dressed actors in over 100 moving pictures.
 
One floor above, one could even find one of Gere’s legendary seducer looks for the 1980 film “American Gigolo”, placed before paintings by Bernardino Luini and Vincenzo Foppa.
 
A slew of designers flew into to pay their respects, to the single most influential designer of the past half century.  Sir Paul Smith, Dries Van Noten, Dean and Dan Caten, Francesco Scognamiglio, Alessandra Facchinetti and Ronnie Fieg. Notably, most of them designers – like Armani – who resolutely still control their own brands.  
 

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“I wore Armani all the time in my youth. And even a jacket from the first Emporio collection with an eagle on the back. He was a master designer,” recalled Dries.  
 
“You had to admire what Giorgio built. And he still owned it all himself. Pretty remarkable,” underlined Smith. 
 
“Respect, we’ve all come to show it,” said Dean Caten. “No one merited more,” added brother Dan. 
 
The house elegantly invited a dozen veteran models to walk in the show, led by Daniela Pestova and Mark Vanderloo. While the aisles were full of dignitaries: Camera president Carlo Capasa, French Federation boss Pascal Morand, Santo Versace, football star Dusan Vlahovic, TV presenter Lilli Gruber, dancers Roberto Bolle and Hugo Marchand, film directors Giuseppe Tornatore and Marco Bellocchio.
 
As a memory, guests were given with their invitations a white T-shirt with Armani’s image printed on the front. Though the dress code was black tie, many wore the T-shirt to the show.

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Though the most impressive presence was composer Luigi Einaudi, whose piano performance was magical. Playing as Giorgio’s partner Leo Dell’Orco and niece Silvana Armani took the bow. 
 
The night before, the Camera della Moda – Italian fashion’s governing body – presented its Legacy Award.  in La Scala posthumously to Armani, represented by his family, Silvana, Leo and nephew Andrea Camerana.
 
“He was a creative leader, yes, but also a gentle and generous lion. He believed in the lasting power of his work, as we all do,” said Anna Wintour, in a tribute to Armani at the Camera’s Sustainable Fashion Awards. 
 
The Pinacoteca di Brera first approached Armani last year about organizing a retrospective of his work to mark the 50th anniversary of his fashion house. The result elegantly showcases his creations before exceptional works of art in the storied museum.

Curiously, even though fashion exhibitions are now quite common in major museums like the Met in New York, the V&A in London and even the Louvre, this is the first important retrospective of an Italian designer in Milan. Another first for Giorgio.

Armani’s greatest hits will now stand before masterpieces of the Italian Rinascimento: Raphael, Mantegna, Piero della Francesca, Botticelli, Titian, Mantegna and Tiepolo.
 
After the 75 looks in the show, one could discover 129 silhouettes from Armani’s wardrobe in the exhibition – for women and men, spanning his beginnings in the 1980s to the present day. 

The exhibition “Giorgio Armani: Milano, Per Amore”, runs until January 11, 2026. Serious fashionistas should not miss it.
 
We will not see his like again.