Emporio Armani Spring Summer 2026 “RITORNI” Story by RUNWAY MAGAZINE. Photo Courtesy: Giorgio Armani.
The Emporio Armani Spring Summer 2026 show in Milan today was more than a seasonal presentation. It was a testament — a fleeting instant suspended between return and remembrance — to Giorgio Armani’s extraordinary legacy. Entitled RITORNI (“Returns”), the collection unfolded inside the white-bricked Armani/Teatro, the house’s most symbolic stage, and carried the weight of farewell.
Applause swelled after the closing triptych of pastel slips and separates — embellished, beaded, layered, walked in sheer-shaft boots with flat soles. It did not subside. The clapping stretched through the finale, the models themselves joining in. And then, as if compelled by duty as much as emotion, the Italian press rose to their feet first, quickly followed by the rest of us. Eyes lingered on the corridor to backstage, where Giorgio Armani so many times had stepped forward, nodding, bowing, half-waving.
Silvana Armani, niece of Giorgio and the lead of Emporio’s womenswear, had declared she would not take a bow. This was still his show — his moment. The applause became a vigil, a collective act of remembrance.
Originally planned as part of Armani’s 50th anniversary celebrations, this season’s program was reconfigured after his death into a dual farewell: Emporio this afternoon, Giorgio Armani this Sunday. Together, they form his arrivederci. If the Sunday evening show will be the great memorial, Emporio was the poignant preface — intimate, emotional, and unmistakably Armani.
The collection drew on the liminal space between travel and return. Clothes for when you are freshly back from elsewhere, grains of foreign sand still clinging to you, yet your vision of home sharpened by distance. The opening movement — a greige symphony of post-safari travelwear softened by Armani’s hand — featured silk with metallic sheens, intricate knitwork, dangling fringed belts, and jackets open to reveal a fading tan.
Then came the souvenirs of travel: ikat silks in billowing trousers and jackets, check tailoring and blouses, obi-stitched necklines, belted corsets. These were cultural echoes reframed through Armani’s vocabulary, reminding us of how patterns travel across borders, shifting yet familiar.
For evening, Emporio’s traveler drifted into nostalgia for nightlife — low-cut black dungarees, lilac parachute trousers in dense nylon, crystal-studded bandeaus and bras. An imagined return ticket to moments just lived.
And finally, the pastel trio — delicate, adorned, luminous. The applause rose again, filling the Teatro. Giorgio Armani was no longer there to step out, but his presence was everywhere. His 44-year-old line, his unshakable discipline, his refusal of spectacle in favor of timeless beauty — all carried forward.
RITORNI was not simply a collection. It was the living memory of a designer who shaped not just a house, but an entire way of dressing. A legacy beautifully intact, even in his absence.
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