At Giorgio Armani, The Unexpected Comeback

American Christy Turlington is the face of Giorgio Armani’s new campaign, thirty years after she graced the Italian fashion house’s catwalks.

The Giorgio Armani fashion house has (at least) one core value: loyalty. Loyalty to the style of the great couturier who passed away last year, loyalty to a minimalist aesthetic that has become its signature, but also loyalty (and a reunion) with Christy Turlington. The 57-year-old American supermodel is the face of a new Giorgio Armani campaign, the first conceived by Silvana Armani and Leo
Dell’Orco, alongside male models Liam Kelly and Akbar Shamji. According to the house, it is more than just a commercial campaign; it is a “statement of identity, reaffirming the enduring strength and contemporary relevance of the Armani codes.”

The images are crisp, timeless, sculpted by photographer Oliver Hadlee Pearch : an atmosphere Christy Turlington knows well, both through personal taste (she was a pioneer of a certain minimalist lifestyle) and experience. Flashback: in the late 1980s, the young woman from California moved to New York, where her modeling work for Calvin Klein (as would later be that of Kate Moss) propelled her to the status of a social phenomenon. Less divisive than her British counterpart (whose waif-like figure and “heroine chic” look stirred up strong emotions), Christy Turlington became the embodiment of the healthy, athletic American woman, whose smile would become legendary under the lens of the greatest photographers of the time, starting with Herb Ritts (as early as 1988) and Peter Lindbergh . Soon, she became a full-fledged member of the top model gang, alongside Carla Bruni, Claudia Schiffer, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista, who would vamp the entire planet for more than ten years.

In Milan, Giorgio Armani, of course, had a keen eye. Without hesitation, the Italian designer called upon the beautiful American model, who would become one of the loyal models on the Signor Armani catwalk for several years. It’s worth noting that Silvana Armani – who recently told Le Figaro, “My uncle taught me everything” – must certainly have been involved. A loyal collaborator, Leo Dell’Orco joined the company in the late 1970s: needless to say, he was there too, and the two creatives must have chosen this star-studded comeback together. For the occasion, it was associated with a series of eleven symbols embodying the house, including the rose, the cat, jade, the 1982 Logo Lamp, and the eye, “discreet, a symbol of renewal and a reflection of the Armani essence.”This, too, is Christy’s.

• WWD/Getty ImagesChristy Turlington and Carla BruniAt a Giorgio Armani fashion show in Milan in the 1990s.
• WWD/Getty ImagesChristy TurlingtonAt a Giorgio Armani fashion show in Milan in the 1990s.
• WWD/Getty ImagesChristy TurlingtonAt a Giorgio Armani fashion show in Milan in the 1990s.
• Penske Media/Getty ImagesChristy TurlingtonAt a Giorgio Armani fashion show in Milan in the 1990s.

Penske Media/Getty ImagesChristy TurlingtonAt a Giorgio Armani fashion show in Milan in the 1990s.