Giorgio Armani: A Blank Page and a Pencil

Armani presents his Spring Menswear 2024 collection as he has been doing since 1975, with a blank page and a pencil.

This included a direct reference to his first menswear collection in the close-up print of the raffia fabric used in spacious blousons, trousers, and bags, but that archival gesture wasn’t the point. “The collection surely recalls the past, without making it all about the past,” he said later.

We could see collarless jackets in soft-textured seersucker, lattice-framed clutch bags, logo-layered silk shirts and foulards, flowing silky oversized trench coats in pearl tones, loose-woven espadrilles, breezy tie-print silk separates, and an indigo-dyed twinset. Armani said he had his models carry their straw hats instead of wearing them because they are more of a beachside piece than something for the city—similarly, he said he avoided shorts.

A nearly all-white section also included an especially magnificent field jacket and cargo pants, and four suits that closed the collection contained some silhouettes that any Hollywood representative would fondly remember from the days of glory before Netflix.

This was Armani returning to his blank page and preparing his pencil for the next chapter. As he noted, it was by filling those blank pages, again and again, that he learned to become a designer.