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Show Report

Show Report: Emporio Armani S/S 14 Menswear

by Lou Stoppard on 24 June 2013

Lou Stoppard reports on the Emporio Armani S/S 14 menswear show.

Lou Stoppard reports on the Emporio Armani S/S 14 menswear show.

The high fashion industry has a tempestuous relationship with the digital world. It treats it like a scary new universe, treading with caution, or even fear, at every step. It's taken brands years to embrace the opportunities of e-retail, while some of the brightest young talents on the scene don't even prioritise the web in their business plans - hinting at you Christopher Kane. 

It's apt then that Giorgio Armani's 'Digital' themed Emporio Armani collection was a futuristic vision of clinical white sportswear, space-age accessories - including a particularly kooky pair of google glasses that completely covered the top half of the wearer's head - and graphic geometric shapes. These could have been costumes from some sci-fi film, with some models resembling scientists in a lab and others looking like astronauts ready to fight space crime - a perfect symbol of high fashion's strange view of the web.

Fantasy aside, the meat and potatoes of the collection was signature Armani - all clean lines and subtle, supple shapes. The obvious references to digital came in the details, from the techie hexagon print to the laser-cut holes used to create the illusion of codes.

All in all, this collection will appeal to Armani's enthusiastic fanbase who like their lines clean and their sportswear expensive. But in the face of designers like Iris van Herpen, who is truly embracing technology to make pioneering 3D printed dresses, Armani's costumey take on digital seems somewhat out of date. The closing section reinforced this -  male models were trussed up in eveningwear and appeared with a girl on each arm in a strange ménage à trois set up that could have been lifted from a cheesy spy movie. A crowd pleaser, but an outdated vision of the modern man.

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