Silvana Armani, the niece of the late Giorgio Armani, who died in September of 2025, was faced with a similar conundrum. This was the first Armani Privé show since the her uncle’s passing, and her first flying solo. (Silvana has been the head of the women’s style office at Giorgio Armani, the company, for years, designing the women’s collections at Emporio Armani and Giorgio Armani, the label, under her uncle.) She presented an honest effort. Looking past the excess of a seafoam green color (the collection was titled “Jade”), the clothes paraded around the second story of the Palazzo Armani seemed to delicately aim to modernize the Privé labe — they were more sensual, mostly unfuzzy, and seemed to be aimed at a wider age demographic.
“I found it very elegant, very Armani,” I overheard a woman, likely in her mid 50s, telling another in Spanish. They were both wearing Privé looks from past collections. “I would wear most of it,” she said. Her friend replied, visibly less moved: “I don’t know, a lot of it felt very young, for a flat [chested] girl,” she said, “I think Giorgio understood us a little more.”
Michelle Pfeiffer, a longtime Armani customer who was seated next to Kate Hudson, Gemma Chan, and others at the Paris show, appeared convinced. “That was beautiful,” she said when we coincidentally took the elevator together. As we walked out into a hallway packed with models, still in their runway looks, she said quietly: “Armani would be proud.”
The most extravagant of scenes, however, did not take place during couture week but two days prior. Véronique Nichanian showed her final collection for Hermès after helming the menswear side of the business for 38 years. The mega-show took place, fittingly so, at the Palais Brongniart, a 19th-century stock exchange commissioned by Napoleon. Usher and Travis Scott were in attendance, with the former signing a VICs’ Birkin bag.