In a world off-kilter, there is something very soothing about the remarkable consistency of Giorgio Armani. Taking your seat at one of the little café tables Mr. A had installed inside Armani/Teatro—the house’s Tadao Ando-designed minimalist concrete and glass HQ on Via Bergognone—you know what you were getting without having to look at a menu: understated unstructured suiting and gossamer gowns shimmering like the Milky Way. (On this busy weekend, Demi Moore wore an example of the latter style from the house’s Armani Privé couture line on the Oscars red carpet in Los Angeles a few hours after the Giorgio Armani collection hit the runway in Milan.)
Mr. A turned 90 this year, and has been designing beautifully timeless clothes in tasteful neutrals for nearly half a century. The man has seen a lot. For fall 2025, Armani seemed to be thinking in terms of geological time. He titled the collection “Roots,” and its tactile velvets, cashmeres, and jacquard silks came in a range of rich earth tones: sandy and golden shades of beige that called to mind deserts and beaches, chocolatey soil brown, verdant greens, and ocean blues. Multicolor beaded tops and a cropped jacket entirely covered in concentric lines of piping resembled agate slices or the striated layers of sedimentary rock formed over millennia.
Many looks were monochromatic, though a series of gradient prints splashed across silk pants and coordinating sets looked like the abstract color fields observed in satellite images of earth. Armani’s world view is expansive and he has long looked to the four corners of the globe for inspiration. He recut his signature soft single-breasted blazers as button-front wrap tops inspired by kimonos and Mandarin collar jackets. Halters seemed to take cues from the little crop tops paired with lehengas. Graphic patterns included ikats and Navajo-style motifs.
Looking back on Armani’s storied career, the designer’s greatest innovation was to take the stuffing out of suiting in the 1970s, removing shoulder pads and linings so that both men and women could clad themselves in jackets that allowed a greater range of movement. Here, he performed a similar trick on pants: nearly every pair featured a parachute silhouette that was blousy up top and cinched at the ankle, with vertical pleats that exuded easy elegance as the models strode purposefully along the café seating-lined runway in their flat boots. In the land of Armani, shades of gray—or in this case, greige—matter a lot.
