These are timeless thoughts, as narrated by the voice of renowned and multi-awarded Italian actor Pierfrancesco Favino in the 20-minutes video-documentary that precedes and introduces the Giorgio Armani Spring/Summer 2021 show, and that, through an emotional edit of images, memories and archive interviews spans decades of Armani’s dazzlingly consistent style, before making way to the new collection, broadcasted for the first time on television.

In the video-documentary, Giorgio Armani’s language evolves relentlessly, whilst staying firm in its roots. It swings in subtle balances between rigour and sensuality, city and exoticism, purity and slight concessions to eccentricity. It is the result of a process of subtraction, which captures time and sublimates it, creating fashion that goes beyond fashion. Each new collection adds headwords to an expanding vocabulary, while reiterating a sense of elegance which puts the person at the centre.

For the Spring/Summer 2021 collection, silhouettes, for both men and women, are essential, soft, fluid: a blend of pure lines and neutral colours —grey, beige, black, blue— that light up with occasional geometries, swarming with rhythmic patterns, following an idea of ton sur ton that is real but also metaphorical, but never prevails over the rest. What emerges is the personality of a woman and a man who are free from aesthetic constraints, careful instead to express themselves through what they wear. Whether everything is matte or shimmering, it is the sense of measure that keeps asserting itself, overcoming time.