On Sunday evening, Giorgio Armani’s niece and head of womenswear, Silvana Armani, and head of menswear, Leo Dell’Orco, closed Milan Fashion Week with a posthumous presentation of the late founder’s spring 2026 collection. The black-tie affair, accompanied by Ludovico Einaudi—the pianist and composer whose Nuvole Bianche played at Mr. Armani’s lying-in-state—had been planned as a 50th‑anniversary celebration. Instead, it became fashion’s final goodbye to its paterfamilias, who died at 91 on September 4. In many ways, the week unfolded as a tribute to the maestro, marked by an Emporio Armani show where Silvana Armani took her first-ever bow, his protégé Stella Jean’s closing gesture of a “Grazie, Mr. Armani” T-shirt, and echoes of his signature unstructured suiting across multiple runways.
Armani was more than a fashion icon: he was a beloved cultural figure whose influence extended far beyond the catwalk. That devotion was reflected in the lines that formed all week for two exhibitions marking his extraordinary half-century of style. Giorgio Armani Privé 2005-2025: 20 Years of Haute Couture at Armani/Silos offers an intimate look at gossamer red-carpet creations hand-embellished with shimmering paillettes, tracing the two decades since he entered fashion’s most exclusive club. Giorgio Armani: Milano, Per Amore at the show venue, Pinacoteca di Brera, presents over 120 works from across his career alongside Italian Old Master paintings, creating a striking dialogue between Armani’s beautifully streamlined designs and centuries of artistic tradition. Both remain open through the end of the year.
Looking around the paper‑lantern‑lit courtyard of the Pinacoteca di Brera last night, where the runway was populated with famous Armani faces of the past like Gina Di Bernardo, Daniela Peštová, and Nadège Dubospertus and a constellation of film stars in the front row, the scene felt suspended in time. Cate Blanchett shimmered in a sculpted black‑and‑gold top, Glenn Close stood poised in a tuxedo, and Richard Gere exuded an effortless grace that defined his 1980 star‑making turn in American Gigolo. If Armani’s silhouettes rarely shifted radically season to season, he exemplified the revolutionary model of genius: a single decisive break with tradition. Fifty shades of greige jackets and a floor‑sweeping closing look seemed to have stepped straight from mannequins upstairs—one dressed in a fall 1993 three‑piece suit, another in the Tuareg‑blue satin ball skirt worn by Juliette Binoche at Cannes in 2016. It was a fitting farewell to a lifetime of elegance.
