Anjelica Huston, a good Armani jacketeer, knows just how to wear it, and she tends to wear a lot of black and white and red. A year and a half ago, she got married in a “diamond white” Armani jacket over a white Armani dress. “He’s simple,” she has said of Armani, “which is the hardest thing in the world.”
Like all the great classics of fashion—the Chanel suit, the Kelly bag, the Manolo Blahnik pump—the Armani jacket is widely copied. Many of the top American designers have appropriated the tapered, stripped-down Armani look and the subtle Armani color palette in their own jackets. None of this has had much effect on demand for the real thing. Sales of Armani black-label jackets, which are made in a small factory outside Milan that has been run by the same family for several generations, have been increasing by 15 to 20 percent a year over the last three or four years. American women bought just under 30,000 of them last year. (American men bought a third that many for themselves; does this mean that women care more about being taken seriously?) Because the style changes from year to year are subtle rather than drastic, and because the things wear so well, there’s an Armani army out there that never wears anything else.
OK, so what about my spring jacket? It’s been more than a month since I hit the stores, and nobody has called me about coming in. (Nobody ever does call me, as it turns out.) I call the Armani store, and a friendly (surprise!) saleswoman named Jenny tells me to come on over, they’ve got the spring book, and a few jackets have already arrived. Come early in the morning, she says, when it’s not crowded. I get there at ten o’clock on the dot the next morning. The book is about four inches thick and somewhat overwhelming.
I see shawl-collared jackets, collarless jackets, cardigan-style jackets, asymmetrical jackets, and of course the classic Armani blazers, both single- and double-breasted, with notched or peaked lapels. There’s a “cobra jacket” that buttons at the neck with a banded collar. Jackets with loops instead of buttonholes; jackets with only one button, perfectly placed; jackets that are bordered with a fine cord that runs down the front and ties at the waist. Linen jackets, wool crepe jackets, cotton jackets, silk jackets. A sea of muted earth-colored fabrics—beige, gray, taupe, stone, sand, jellyfish, navy, black, white. Jackets, jackets, jackets.
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