Milan Fashion Week: Armani Affronted

Anyone who doubts the correlation between fashion and art need only consider that, like the artist, the fashion designer is largely considered to be only as good as his last collection. If said designer is a tyro with only a season or two under his belt, the correlation becomes all the clearer. The sophomore book was a disappointment, the second role was a bust, the latest album was not as good as the first.

Or so the song goes. It's a tough world out there.

Even the artist in his prime can suffer a reactive disappointment, and disappointment may sow the seeds of doubt in the mind of the critic (we cannot speak for the artist, who we hope possesses a large enough ego to overlook a cavil or two).

Ego is sometimes as unpredictable as an act of God.

Giorgio Armani is an artist in his prime and in the prime of his ego. Back in 2005, he threw a clinker of a collection that was based on bloomers. Bloomers did not change either the fashion industry or the way women dressed, and because of the designer's track record he was treated gently and respectfully by the media. He did not receive, as a freshman designer might, a critical walloping. Women did not respond well to the pantaloons, no matter how well tailored, and the moment became a minor blip in fashion history that passed without causing psychic injury.

Armani returned to form the following season with a collection that he predicated upon what women really want, i. e. not satin diapers. The critics breathed a sigh of relief at this careful backtracking; he is taking our needs into account after a brief and thankfully temporary period of delusion. This is the Armani we know and love. They still politely wondered if he would ever break out of his smartly tailored jacket.

In a three-week-old review of the designer's couture collection, Cathy Horyn of The New York Times referred to that signature piece as a "huge beige hub" and remarked that she doubted whether "a jewel of a dress" would ever emerge from within it. She went on to say that Mr. Armani, unlike Mr. Lagerfeld, had a diminished ability to use his own history or wit as a reference point or to create sui generis garments. In order to produce such a masterpiece, she felt, Mr. Armani would need both irony and self-reference, neither of which was in the range of his "imagination." She said that his body of work had been "impeccable."

Mr. Armani, via his head of communications, not so promptly uninvited Ms. Horyn from his Autumn 2008 ready-to-wear show on the morning of the show. The rescindment took the form of an e-mail, supposedly reinforcing the contents of an earlier letter that Ms. Horyn did not receive. Mr. Armani, the e-mail said, had not cared for the "tone" Ms. Horyn had used to describe his friends and family as they waited for the start of the January haute couture show. Ms. Horyn's tone had been "belittling" and Ms. Horyn need not darken the ready-to-wear doorway with her presence.

For those of you who do not read Ms. Horyn's column, the article stated, "Sophia Lauren, dressed in a dark coat and trousers, sat in the front row. There was no need to smile because Sophia Loren had smiled so many times before. Mr. Armani’s niece, Roberta, sat next to Hilary Swank, who had on a black beaded cocktail dress. Ms. Armani never seemed to stop smiling.

The burlesque star Dita Von Teese, who had changed from a Dior in the afternoon to an Armani, its portrait neckline now framing her bosom, sat very still, her hands folded on her lap, the picture of a lady in drag."

It could well be that the burlesque star objected to having her appearance associated with transvestism, especially when wearing one of Mr. Armani's own garments. Mr. Armani might have balked similarly. Neither Mr. Armani's niece nor Ms. Loren seemed to have grounds for complaint, but you never know. These are sensitive times.

It seems more likely that the real reason for the retraction was that the designer perceived Ms. Horyn's remark about his apparent inability to produce a magnum opus as damning. That may have been what was truly "belittling," and Armani may have felt it discredited a designer with a prolific and commercially successful body of work. To dissemble and use a sophistic reason for the rescindment was preferable to acknowledging the existence of the statement and ergo admitting that it had an impact. By easing around its gravitas, the statement became distant and less alive. Still, it's the designer version of the actor who will never win an Oscar, the writer who will never win the Pulitzer, and the singer who will not cart home a Grammy. Ever.

You can see how quickly such a thing might get out of hand, even if it won't approach the hostility of the Capulet-Montague feud. Was Ms. Horyn throwing down a gauntlet or was her statement an absolute? What of Armani's enormous body of work; was all of this not up to snuff? Was Ms. Horyn saying that he had never once produced "a jewel"? What about all those Armanis that have paraded down red carpets on the backs of Hollywood's shiniest stars, were these simply "impeccable" shmattes?

Whatever the real reason for the e-mail, it read as a self-conscious and puny one. It lacked, as the Italians say, coglioni, and there was Ms. Horyn busting what was left of them in an On the Runway blog post.

It may have looked like an antique comedy of errors, but it was a modern conundrum with modern implications.

Language is a funny thing, especially today. No sooner does one manage to extricate one's foot from one's mouth then someone else forces it back in there. It happens with increasing inadvertence as the world grows smaller, and as a result of this shrinkage there are innumerable fresh opportunities to offend. Journalists--and especially those who collate letters to editors--know that if someone can take umbrage, he will. There is always someone to rile. That person might live in a remote corner of the Idaho Panhandle, but he's out there. There is a giant computer in Belgium that stores all of our choicest and not-so-select words and keeps a running tab, so watch it, buddy.

We've now worked ourselves into a tight little knot that requires a communication protocol. We must stick to the simplest language; words that are in the vernacular suddenly have significance well outside our ken. We are all arrivistes on the new linguistic frontier. Simple literacy is no longer enough--if by literacy we mean that one knows when it is necessary to seek information, where one might find correct information, and how one must properly use that information.

All of this takes place before expression, before considering tone, before wondering about what goes on in someone else's head. If you're feeling somewhat less than creative, you are on the right track. You may now call yourself, until tomorrow, a responsible writer.

By the looks of it we are going to have to write with a very cramped pen.

And that ready-to-wear collection? Armani redux, with a bit of social reflux. Always true to itself in its fashion.