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Aurora Borealis Armani Privé

It was forward to the future at Armani Privé where Italy’s most famous designer presented a collection Monday night, Jan. 25, that referenced Art Deco, yet used almost exclusively futuristic high-tech fabrics.

Take Giorgio Armani’s favorite material in this Spring 2010 haute couture collection – liquid metal. And his favorite fabric effect, aurora borealis, where the polar lights seemed almost impregnated into silk jacquard looks.

“Very futuristic? Maybe, but for today, for 2010,” said Armani about Privé, his haute couture line that he shows twice a year in Paris. The designer’s signature ready-to-wear collection and junior Emporio Armani collections are both presented in Milan.

Several of the polar image dresses, in particular a silvery sapphire column that glimmered with each step down the catwalk, drew ripples of applause and the odd audible gasp from Armani’s suitably glittering front-row. It included Anne Hathaway, Claudia Cardinale, Olga Kurylenko, Elsa Pataky, Tina Turner and Jean Marc Barr all perched around the designer’s executive socialite daughter Roberta Armani.

In terms of silhouette, this was classic Armani with a twist, as the couturier shaved down his silhouette, but amped up the ruffles and curves. On the show’s backdrop staged in the Palais de Trocadero overlooking the Eiffel Tower hung a giant silver crescent moon, and the same shape popped up as everything from clasps on bolero jackets to fasteners of sleek evening clutches.

For Spring 2010, Armani kept his hemlines short, especially with curvy suits, though he added faintly super heroine shoulders with a hint of a Chinese space station pagoda.

Armani also broke new ground, especially with the amount of flesh, as many jackets were cut with deep gorges. One model’s breast flashed out of an early look in the show, something no one has caught a glimpse of before in an Armani couture show.

But the defining looks were surely the liquid metal trouser suits: power dressing for the new decade, authoritative fashion, where the girls seemed practically poured into the suits.

Armani took his bow looking suitably tanned – his New Year was spent on his luxury yacht in Antigua – after this cyber chic couture moment with an aurora borealis influence. From Antigua to the Arctic, in other words.

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