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So much the better. The French idea of folie, which encourages a designer like Daniel Hechter to talk about "ecological colors" and take pride in once having worked "28 different shades into one man's outfit" may be the thing that is now cramping their style. Certainly folie is absent from Armani's fall women's collection, which is previewed exclusively on these pages. Armani's clothes show wit instead of frivolity, refinement of detail instead of great experimental expanses, what Grace Mirabella, editor of Vogue, calls "style without excessive design." Says American Designer Bill Blass: "He has an extremely soigné approach to the female form. Armani has a sureness. He is a genius for his time."
Certainly, his gift has never before seemed so sure, his humor so high, his sophistication so unassuming yet so emphatic and eclectic. Highlights: evening jackets of gold lame and a caped raincoat reworked from an Australian shepherd's field garment; hooded sweatshirts in flyweight suede so brightly colored they are nicknamed "the jelly beans"; felt hats that look like Philip Marlowe fedoras blocked by the College of Cardinals; gaucho-style pants gathered at mid-calf or just below the knee; an elongated jacket, of the customary faultless tailoring, that is a zoot-suiter's vision of respectability. And the fabrics: striped and patterned wool velvet with crépons of silk and wool against quilted padded linen, or satined cotton lined with silk set over printed velvet. Each outfit is a little essay in boulevard sensuality, with an average high-end price tag of $1,300 that could drive anybody around the block.
Putting on Armani is, indeed, suiting up for Easy Street. The quality does not fall off with the price in his less expensive lines, but the cheapest Armani may still bust many budgets. His women's clothes are strictly top of the line; a 30% less expensive collection, called Mani, is available only in Europe and New York. His men's wear ranges from what Armani calls couture (although the clothes are made 70% by machine) through ready-to-wear, which costs 40% less and is manufactured solely for America, to couture sportswear made in Italy and less costly items that are partly made in Hong Kong. But for the moment, one may deal with these clothes not as commodities but as wish fulfillments; dreams like this are not too rich for anyone's blood. The reveries that the clothes conjure up may be, to everyone's surprise, a lot more realistic than the price tag.
Armani's clothes—whether a man's nubby tweed jacket with a back flap like a game warden's or a woman's gray suede greatcoat cut with playful severity—are not meant to be like those magic cloaks that, once donned, whisk the wearer off into fairy-tale deliriums. They are clothes for the exalted everyday, not intended to suggest a masquerade. This leads some, like Elio Fiorucci, guiding light of the trendy boutiques that bear his name, to suggest that "Armani's clothes for women are overserious and not for the many women who like to have fun." The fun that is there, however, is usually sly and (like the military wrist warmers hidden inside the cuffs of his oversize sweaters) often functional as well.