Giorgio Armani announced today he is canceling his live fashion shows this month, for Armani Privé at Haute Couture in Paris later this January and for his both his fall 2022 menswear collection and fall 2022 Emporio Armani collection expected at Milan men’s Fashion Week next week. Back in February 2020, Mr. Armani was the first designer in fashion to close his doors to a live audience, even as the extent of the oncoming first wave of COVID-19 was not yet apparent. Armani’s decision then proved extremely prescient—even if Paris Fashion Week did largely go ahead that fall 2020 season—so today’s news sparks a daunting sense of déjà vu.
A statement from Armani’s company read: “This decision was made with great regret and following careful reflection in the light of the worsening epidemiological situation. As the designer has expressed on many occasions, the shows are crucial and irreplaceable occasions but the health and safety of both employees and the public must once again take priority.”
So will Giorgio Armani once again be the first domino in a fresh chain of fashion show cancelations? At the moment in Milan and even more so in Paris, the highly contagious Omicron variant is obliging a huge number of people to self-isolate while they recover. It is understood that Mr. Armani felt the prospect of taking a 60-strong team to present Privé in Paris seemed logistically fraught, and more broadly that the whole project of his shows—to present his designs in a joyful and celebratory context—would be stymied by the current atmosphere of contagion. Hence the calling off.
For now, however, it still appears that the upcoming editions of Pitti Uomo in Florence, menswear in Milan and Paris, and then couture at the end of the month will largely go ahead.
“We deeply understand the decision by Mr. Armani to cancel his fashion show,” said the president of Italy’s Camera Della Moda, Carlo Capasa, today—before adding that under current Italian legislation shows are permitted to go ahead with an audience, provided everyone in that audience holds a Super Green Pass proof of vaccination and wears an N95-equivalent FFP2 mask. Capasa did however note, “It is possible that in the forthcoming days there may be some changes to the calendar of the Fashion Week… always with the greatest attention to the complex health situation that Italy is in, some events which to date cannot be held as originally imagined may have to be canceled or postponed.”
Let’s wait and see.
Update:
Since today’s Armani announcement, Brunello Cucinelli has said that while he plans to present his menswear in Milan as usual, he has decided to withdraw from Pitti, where he usually also shows to that event’s huge audience of buyers. In a statement Cucinelli said the decision to withdraw from Pitti was “painful but necessary” and added that his three main sales campaign sites in Milan, New York, and Shanghai would all this season feature medical teams offering on-the-spot testing. The statement continued: “This decision was made after realizing and acknowledging the current moment that Italy and the rest of the world are currently experiencing. It was also made with a sense of responsibility, heading in a direction taken in recent months that we all hope can lead us as soon as possible to a normal life and relations.”