Armani’s Glamorous Last Collection

The invitation to the Giorgio Armani show, at an art institute in Milan on Sunday evening, requested black tie, and nearly all 600 guests obliged. Waiters passed Champagne in the courtyard, illuminated by light boxes arranged in a grid, and Richard Gere, Lauren Hutton, Glenn Close, and Cate Blanchett were in the house. The show itself was held around the stone colonnade, and once it started, an hour after arrivals began, 90 models would appear. Many were familiar: Gina Di Bernardo, Mark Vanderloo, and the ethereal Agnese Zogla, an Armani favorite, who closed the show. Zogla, in a midnight-navy beaded gown, walked the circuit of the colonnade alone. It was an elegant gesture that Armani, who died earlier this month, would probably have liked.

But let’s consider the clothes for a moment. The opening looks, shown on couples, consisted of unstructured suits in lightweight fabrics in shades of stone and sand. Some trousers had drawstrings. Overseen by Silvana Armani and Leo Dell’Orco, who was Armani’s partner, the collection seemed to span the colors of the day, or the colors of a day on the island of Pantelleria, between Sicily and Tunisia, where the designer had a home. The final looks, all restrained with light beadwork, reached the color of midnight in summer.

Everything that can possibly be said about the genius of Giorgio Armani, his sprezzatura — his effortlessness — has been said. But here’s the irony, which the final days of the Milan spring collections made clear: His clothes don’t have to be explained; you understand them when you see them. That can’t be said of two other collections, Bottega Veneta, by its new creative director, Louise Trotter, and Ferragamo, by Max Davis.

Bottega has had several good designers in recent years, notably Tomas Maier, Daniel Lee, and Matthieu Blazy, who departed for Chanel. Each was quite different. So I wondered where Trotter, in her debut, would pick up the thread or if she would bring a fresh sensibility to the brand.

Though less exuberant and startling than Blazy, she seemed in his camp in terms of craft display, with a highly textured floor-length dress (or was the beast a coat?) of white curly bits; a feathery ecru top with white pants; and a number of styles in a shiny, bristly material that received a lot of attention and made made think of the big brush machines in a car wash. (Trotter said afterward that the material was recycled fiberglass “because I wanted to represent the glass of Murano.”)

The show’s standout was a sweeping dark-brown cape of woven leather with a fringed hem. Trotter said it took 4,000 hours to make. That and the no doubt fantastic price aside, the cape looked beautiful for its plainness and seemed light on the body. Trotter had some lovely tops in taffeta with mildly draped open necklines that reminded me of the bodice of an Edwardian gown made new. She paired one with masculine black trousers.

But much of her exaggerated tailoring shapes, however well crafted, looked heavy and engulfing, and that look of oversize shoulders and wide-leg pants has generally moved on. Overall, I felt the collection looked laden — with expensive materials, craft, and significance. In other words, Trotter’s virtuosity showed, rather than what is truly interesting and personal to her about how to dress in 2026.

Do we know what that is? Only time will tell. But I didn’t buy it when she said, “I want my wearer to feel at ease, confident … I want people to go places in my clothes.” Because that’s not what these clothes said.

Davis has an affection for Salvatore Ferragamo’s years in Hollywood, and a source of inspiration this season was Lola Todd, a Jazz Age star who was photographed nearly head to toe in leopard print. The photo was pinned on Davis’s backstage mood board along with images of flappers, men in zoot suits, and illustrations by John Held Jr.

The decades of the ’20s and ’30s are easy pickings for designers. Davis showed a lot of shifts, including one with a cuttlefish pattern down the front (it looked cool for being abstract); low-waisted silk outfits swagged heavily with sashes; and some striking elongated tailoring for men. But Davis’s collections often feel too beholden to references, so they seem a bit unreal. The best bits were at the very end: a handful of sleek, fitted, perfectly cut styles in patent leather. More, please.