The nostalgic modernity of Emporio Armani How Armani's diffusion line rewrote the idea of luxury in the 80s

During a conference held in Florence for Confindustria in recent days, Maria Grazia Chiuri of Dior said: «We should forget the whole idea of "democratic" fashion here in Italy. If a garment is done well, why does it have to be "democratic"?». Words that brought to mind the description of his Emporio Armani line that Giorgio Armani made at GQ last September: «I imagined it as a line with which to experiment, capturing new trends and proposing a democratic fashion». In times like these, when the fashion industry tries to reach the highest possible number of customers but would do anything not to appear elitist, the question of the democratic nature of fashion has emerged with dramatic importance. On the one hand, consumers are encouraged to want new products while on the other hand, they are told every day that fast fashion is unsustainable and that therefore it is necessary to find an alternative to unbridled consumption. Recently this alternative has been vintage: from the classic markets to the digital empire of Grailed, the fashion of the past has become the surrogate to the polluting fast fashion, to the lightning-fast cycles of its trends and to its synthetic fabrics produced in the most remote sweatshops in the world. Precisely this vintage trend has brought back a brand like Emporio Armani, whose 80s and 90s garments have found a second life as a sober and versatile uniform of Millennials and Gen Z - a response to the visual aggressiveness and prefabricated hype of fashion on social media that contrasts the value of timelessness with that of coolness.

If even today international travelers who land at Linate are welcomed by the monumental sign that recites the name of the brand and if the brand itself belongs to that narrow circle of diffusion lines that survived the 90s and early 2000s, the long existence of minor lines such as Armani Jeans and EA7, which lasted until 2018,  made it lose the luxury aura of the first collections by diluting the prestigiousness of Armani's eagle in a cascade of branded products that have invaded every corner of the Italian province for years. Today the aesthetics of the brand stands on a more conventional and trend-oriented luxury, certainly in line with the times and with the market but also much less recognizable and distinctive, when instead its DNA is something that opinion leaders actively seek and desire. This perceptive change has to do with the brand but also with its context: on the one hand, in fact, there is no longer a distinctive aesthetic of Emporio Armani and the brand has lost that youthful freshness that distinguished it; on the other hand, the market has been saturated with high basics much more accessible as well as other younger fashion brands with a more pronounced identity, with the soft aesthetic of Dellai's 80s campaigns which, abandoned by Emporio, has been revived with great success, for example, by Teddy Santis in his campaigns for Aimé Leon Dore, by Justin Saunders in his moodboards for @jjjjound or by brands such as Sporty & Rich.

It would be interesting to see, today, in the face of a remarkable economic and logistical growth compared to the 80s, Emporio reclaim its ownership of an aesthetic that in fact belongs to it by right as part of its history and its past and therefore much more authentic and sincere than the many other brands that today are riding this aesthetic. New consumers are looking for a story and Emporio Armani still has its own – and it's a lot. But if already the brand, on the occasion of its 40th anniversary, has begun to dust off its most classic style with a new campaign signed by Francesco Finizio, coinciding with an increase in the popularity of the brand in the world of vintage research, it is not excluded that even Emporio Armani may one day return to be the most famous name of the new Italian preppy.