Milan (AFP)

Italian fashion master Giorgio Armani, 86, made his homecoming on Monday with a highly anticipated men's collection, combining freedom of movement and extreme elegance, the highlight of Milan Fashion Week.

Far from the fashion-spectacle that the designer has always refused, the models paraded in a green and peaceful setting, in his historic headquarters in via Borgonuovo, near the fashion district.

Smiling, still tanned, white hair and blue eyes, the veteran of Italian fashion, on the arm of his longtime collaborator Leonardo dell'Orco, was warmly applauded at the end of the parade.

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The Italian luxury house was the first to announce the return to the public at the end of May, after being the first to give up in February 2020, at the start of the pandemic that hit the country head-on.

This spring-summer 2022 collection entitled "Back to where it all began", therefore via Borgonuovo 21, and presented during two successive parades, asserts the classicism of the label, while revisiting it by injecting it with a touch of lightness.

- Revisited costume -

The traditional costume is dusted, sometimes refined sometimes casual, with waistcoat-jacket sets worn over Bermuda shorts or wide pleated pants, matched with Mandarin collar shirts or geometric patterned tops.

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The deconstructed and unlined jacket, the emblem of the brand since its founding in 1975, was also in the spotlight, dandy or sporty style.

The silhouette of the Armani man is supple and sophisticated, the cuts are refined and the materials fluid, as in weightlessness.

The maestro's collection gives pride of place to cotton, linen, silk and even satin.

The color palette ranges from omnipresent blue to sandy beige through off-white without neglecting black, Giorgio Armani's favorite color.

Touches of red and green are reminiscent of the colors found in nature, a recurring trend during Milan Fashion Week.

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Armani was the last of the three heavyweights to organize physical parades in Milan, after the light festival offered on Saturday by Dolce & Gabbana at the Metropol, a former cinema that became the brand's headquarters, and the Etro show, which transformed Sunday disused railway tracks in footbridge.

The vast majority of brands present in Milan have chosen to distribute recorded presentations or short films on their own communication channels or on social networks.

- 'Immerse yourself in nature' -

The Prada house thus opted for a virtual parade on Sunday which sees the models wandering in an oppressive tunnel before disembarking on a sunny beach in Sardinia, a symbol of the freedom found after dark periods of confinement.

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"To immerse yourself in nature, to go to the beach, is synonymous with freedom. It is utopian. It is really a primary need, but it is also an intellectual need", comments the designer Miuccia Prada.

With her co-creative director Raf Simons, the stylist brings up to date the wearing of ultra-short shorts, infinitely available, plain, striped or printed, loose or close to the body, sometimes rolled up, as a basis for an accumulation of successive strata.

Combine at will, with sartorial-cut blazers, colorful tank tops, calfskin jackets or even classic waxed raincoats.

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The essential accessory, the bob with integrated mini-pouch, gives touches of pistachio green, mustard yellow or azure blue to a collection dominated by black and white.

The clothes are simple, the materials flexible such as light mohair, batiste and poplin.

For Raf Simons, this spring-summer 2022 collection is "very pure", "practical", but "always elegant".

The presentation of the collections in Milan ends Tuesday at noon before this small world moves to Paris, for men's fashion and then the haute couture shows.

© 2021 AFP