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As a new generation seeks out vintage Armani on eBay, the label is leaning into its own archive. The Armani renaissance is officially on.
On Sunday evening, on the way to the Emporio Armani fashion show here, I did what I always do with … oh, six free minutes of my day: I checked eBay.
Perhaps to get in the Armani spirit, I searched “vintage Armani” (a search I’ve had saved in my account for a couple of years now) and prowled through the hundreds of Armani jackets, shirts and knits that have washed up on the site.
Half an hour later, watching the Emporio show, I began to feel as if my eBay search had sprung to life.
There, in front of me, were sandy-hued chevron sweaters, ripply cigar-brown leather blazers, waist-length insulated jackets with paperback-scaled pockets tacked on the front and suits buttoned, for maximum drama, at the collar: all cousins, if not brothers, of items I’d seen on eBay.
The 120-look buffet (Armani does not skimp on its model budget) was a reminder that Giorgio Armani, the Italian titan who, at 90, continues to look hale in his unwavering navy T-shirts, long ago found his design language — and he’s sticking to it. To start speaking a new dialect now would be illogical and, for Armani’s legion of consumers, destabilizing.