Giorgio Armani’s last fashion will and testament was delivered Sunday evening in the 18th-century Pinacoteca di Brera, one of the great art museums of Milan, before a crowd come to pay him homage.
Richard Gere, the actor whose career Mr. Armani’s clothes had helped launch in “American Gigolo,” was there, in an Armani tux, along with his “Gigolo” co-star Lauren Hutton. So was Glenn Close, who bought her first Armani jacket in 1983, and Cate Blanchett, an ambassador for the house. Spike Lee sat next to Samuel L. Jackson, both in midnight blue. Dries Van Noten came in from Venice, and Santo Versace from down the road.
They were there to attend what Mr. Armani had planned as the ultimate celebration of his half century in business: a runway show and the opening of a retrospective of his career, constructed from pieces in his foundation’s archive. A celebration he had been orchestrating for months, a spokeswoman said, down to the color of the Champagne, the 550 lanterns lighting the courtyard where guests would gather, and the lineup of models. Most of whom would appear in his signature two-by-two strut and which included a sprinkling of women who had walked for the house over the decades.
Mr. Armani’s death on Sept. 4 at age 91, however, transformed the planned party into a tribute: one that wasn’t sad, but rather elegiac. And oddly appropriate. Mr. Armani was a man whose dream was to design everything he touched. It was only fitting he got to design his legacy, too.
Because that’s how the combined runway show/retrospective functioned: as an effective crib sheet to everything Armani represented. Most of all ease, serenity and the power of an unwavering ideal.
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