GIORGIO ARMANI: "I don't want to work like this, it seems immoral to me!"
In a letter published in the American magazine Women’s Wear Daily, the well-known fashion designer made a series of reflections and questionings about the current moment of fashion in the world, in the context of the pandemic caused by Covid-19.
He noted that the current crisis may be the opportunity to change what is not working well, and to redefine a new landscape in the sector, which in recent decades has been marked by a frenetic pace of design, manufacturing and delivery.
He questioned the excesses of the current fashion system that is based on mass consumption and overproduction, without taking care of the environment. He also condemned the oversupply and the speed with which collections follow one another, stressing that it is a “criminal mismatch” between the meteorological time and the commercial seasons.
He said that the fashion system began to decline, when the luxury sector adopted the methods of fast-fashion, with a continuous cycle of deliveries, to sell more. "It doesn't make sense for a jacket or suit of mine to be in store for three weeks, to immediately become obsolete and be replaced by new merchandise, not too different from the old one", he added.
He then questioned the proliferation of fashion shows, turned into grandiloquent shows. “Stop it with fashion as a communication game, with fashion shows around the world just to present insipid ideas. Enough of entertainment with great shows that today are revealed for what they are: inappropriate and vulgar”, he said.
“The moment we are going through is turbulent; but it offers us the unique opportunity to fix what is wrong, to eliminate the superfluous, to find a more human dimension. This is perhaps the most important lesson of this crisis”, he reflected.
It must be recognized that Giorgio Armani has been the first of the big names in the fashion industry to raise his voice to criticize it. So much so, that when he understood the severity of the coronavirus, on February 23, during Milan Fashion Week, he decided to present his fall-winter collection behind closed doors.
Faced with the general closure of stores that prevents the sale of his Spring-Summer collections, he announced that his workshops are working so that his summer creations can remain on the shop windows until September.
“I have always believed in the concept of timeless elegance. It is not only an aesthetic code, but also a way of making clothes that in turn suggests a precise way to buy it. That is, to make it last", he concluded.