Coronavirus: Giorgio Armani will unveil his latest collection with a live television show

As coronavirus forces fashion to walk a new way, Giorgio Armani will unveil a collection where every viewer gets a front-row seat.

Phillip Willan

Giorgio Armani’s latest collection will be a live television event. Picture: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty

less than 2 min read

11:56AMSeptember 07, 2020.

Updated 12:13PMSeptember 07, 2020

Giorgio Armani was the first Italian fashion designer to hold a show behind closed doors as coronavirus took hold in northern Italy last February. This month he will be the first to broadcast a show live on national television.

The 40-minute show, originally for Milan Fashion Week, will be broadcast on September 26 by La7, a national commercial channel.

“Sometimes the simplest ideas can be the best,” Armani, 86, told the Corriere della Sera in an interview.

Fashion designers were often seen dispensing advice on TV in the 1980s, Armani said, “but it has never been used to reveal a new collection, which not even the professionals have had a chance to see. People speak about democratisation, and what is more democratic than television?”

Armani founded his fashion empire in 1975 becoming the fifth-richest person in Italy. The pandemic gave him an opportunity to call on the fashion world to rethink its priorities, opting for a slower, more human pace, better aligned with the seasons. Armani led by example, donating $AU3.25 million struggling hospitals and converting his premises to manufacture protective smocks for doctors and nurses in Italy.

All Italian production plants have temporarily switched to the manufacturing of single use medical overalls, to be used for the individual protection of healthcare workers engaged in the fight against COVID-19.#GiorgioArmani #EmporioArmani pic.twitter.com/M5NGp3xWm6
— Armani (@armani) March 31, 2020

In April he wrote an open letter to Women’s Wear Daily, an American trade journal, welcoming a debate on how the fashion industry could become more environmentally responsible.

“The reflection on how absurd the current state of things is, with the overproduction of garments and a criminal non-alignment between the weather and the commercial season, is courageous and necessary,” he wrote. “This crisis is an opportunity to slow down and realign everything.”

Armani said he had not changed his idea of beauty, saying “I don’t simply associate it with the exterior aspect.”