It wasn’t more than a week ago that we predicted that the “Poet Aesthetic” would be reigning supreme across fashion in 2026 – and it looks like Emporio Armani got the memo that intellectualism is in. The Milanese fashion House put on their Autumn Winter 2026 show this week at their Teatro Armani in Milan – the first collection conceived together by Silvana Armani and Leo Dell’Orco in the wake of the namesake designer’s passing last year.
Inside the former industrial-factory-turned-luxury-headquarters for Armani (designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando), models traipsed a minimalist timber runway, backdropped by industrial cement walls. The opening looks felt equally restrained in palette – stone greys and ashen hues – but certainly not in styling. Armani’s signature layered tailoring was still at the fore – masculine and feminine silhouettes colliding across a spectrum of nearly 150 individual looks.
The House’s show notes referenced the collection as “a place of encounter where masculine and feminine reveal themselves in spontaneous dialogue”. Armani and Dell’Orco envisioned their models set against the evocative backdrop of a music school – campus clothing perhaps for the luxuriously reimagined students of a Juliard or Royal College. “British formality meets Italian urban sensitivity in a balance of discipline and freedom, classicism and individuality,” was how the show notes described it.
Tailoring was worn louche and undone (the sloppy schoolboy who refuses to tuck in his shirt / the edgy schoolgirl who needs her oxford blouse to show more personality – and a touch more skin). Baker caps, berets, plaid sets and brooches signalled this preppy sensibility, but were buoyed by the inclusion of fluffy leg warmers, fringed dresses and sheer, bow-adorned slips worn over dress pants.
Of course, outerwear was a staple throughout – tailcoats and trench coats, silk sweatshirts and lots of denim. And leather accessories remained a star pupil, mostly tucked under arms or slung cross-body in tones of black and brown. Leather gloves in matching leathers were also held or tucked into undone zippers.
The latter half of the show devolved into a series of chalk-grey smocks, each styled uniquely with pins and pussybows, bedazzled ties that lay – with a dishevelled ennui – over shoulders undone.
