Why will Armani bring his show live on La7? The designer wants to become the new champion of national-popular Italianness in fashion

«We are talking about democratization, and what could be more democratic than television?»

This is what Giorgio Armani, interviewed by Il Corriere della Sera, says about the choice to turn his next show co-ed behind closed doors into a 40-minute live television broadcast that will take place in prime time on La7 and will be presented by Lilli Gruber. During the entire duration of the pandemic Giorgio Armani managed, thanks to his now famous open letter, to re-brand himself as the national-popular face of fashion for the Italian public, a familiar and vaguely nostalgic face. And the decision to turn his show into a TV show for the first time completes his transformation into a bridge-figure between the world of fashion and the daily reality of millions of Italians from whom that very world is increasingly remote and removed. 

The designer's ideas about the contradictions of the fashion system and his desire to emphasize the product and not on the communication looking for a dialogue with the public remain completely shareable, just as it is commendable the ethics that informs his decisions to parade behind closed doors – but the question remains about the target of a show-event on TV. Buyers and press would watch the show anyway for professional needs, different is the speech for the generalist audience, famously uns interested in this type of event.