Giorgio Armani Spring 2025 Ready-to-Wear

“What I love most about New York is its speed, its constant reinvention, and its ability to remain both itself and entirely different,” Giorgio Armani told Vogue before his show tonight. He might as well have been describing himself. The 90 year-old showed 90 looks that gave us a dizzyingly broad overview of the many territories Armani has explored during his 49 years in business, yet which also felt fresh: this was more than some reverent retrospective.

The ostensible reason Armani was in New York for his first-ever mainline show outside of Milan— and his first show here since 2013’s One Night Only—was to herald the reopening of his store (and restaurant, and apartments) on Madison Avenue. At the pre-show schmooze the news was that this store has been taking north of $1 million a day in its first three days so far. But beyond that reason, this show was long overdue: between 1975 and 1982 Armani’s ascent from obscure start-up to become the world’s hottest fashion designers was inextricably linked to the passion he inspired here. Second only to Milan, New York was the key launchpad for his global success. As he said of his earliest visits: “Experiencing it for the first time in the late 1970s after only having seen it on the screen was stimulating. It was an exciting time for both the city and America, and I felt like I was part of it.” 

Mid-schmooze, it was the arrival of two steam trains projected onto the walls of the Park Avenue Armory that signaled this evening’s show was ready to go. A curtain dropped to reveal a huge showspace set with semi-circle banquette seating. We gradually settled into Armani’s fantasy waiting room to watch a show that unfolded a little like the Grand Central Station scene in North by Northwest.

The first passenger to stride past wore a cropped trench and full pleated pants tucked into mid-calf boots. She was shadowed by a luggage-lugging porter but also carried a greige leather pochette clipped to her belt and a clutch tucked under her arm. After her appeared several other characters who were precisely delineated by props or styling: these included the flustered hero in greige tailoring whose knitted tie had blown over his unstructured right shoulder, and the uptown princess in blush silk bloomers and jacket dress, also in blush, that nicely complemented the handsome labradoodle-meets-cockapoo dog she held in the crook of one arm. 

More broadly, however, this show played out by passing through key phases of Armani’s design landscape. In womenswear these included the opening section of lushly luxurious, gamine travel wear whose garments were drawn from multiple global traditions and applied with an Armanian sheen. Woven checks and silk jacquards added visual texture. Later tunic-like textured shirts with strong shoulders or de-featured waistcoats were worn over long and layered organza skirts in more peachily gentle tones. There was a striking shirt-parka in a fabric that looked complicatedly ornate in both fabrication and pattern. Armani leant into a wavily lined pattern that was both printed on silks and embroidered into sheer skirts and tops that were also fringed in beading. The transition into evening wear from day was completed with the return of the opening model wearing the kaleidoscopically coral-esque embroidered dress that the porter had presumably been carrying for her behind that first look. This time she was flanked by a trio of men in un-lapeled evening jackets cut in velvet and set with discreet shimmers of crystal.

The womenswear was, for Armani, notably light on tailoring, which allowed for the menswear to offer compensation. Pre-show, he said: “Clothing should enhance the wearer’s personality and tailoring does that perfectly because it’s timeless. While it may seem tied to the past, I believe tailoring is the future.” Stand-out suits included one in striped silk garment-dyed in shades of sagey green whose pants came raffishly tucked into a slouchy boot. A deconstructed jacket was worn over an Armani-version of a baseball shirt. There were some fast-and-loose reinterpretations of the three-piece that saw tailored jackets replaced with button up silk raincoats. Diffused feather prints featured on silken separates before this juggernaut Armani presentation slowly eased to journey’s end with those three black evening jackets. Armani observed: “The path from inspiration to creation is unpredictable, but that’s what makes it so exciting.”