Giorgio Armani’s Neve Show In The St Moritz Snow

On Saturday afternoon, Giorgio Armani took his runway to the slopes of St Moritz for the reboot of his 1985 skiwear line, Neve. British Vogue fashion critic Anders Christian Madsen reports.

 

The show took place in the snow

As far as exclusive fashion shows go, Giorgio Armani’s skiwear presentation in St Moritz this weekend takes the prize. Tucked away in the fairly remote grounds of the city’s Olympic stadium from 1928, the small wooden structure erected for the Neve show – the name of his skiwear label – was literally covered in snow, with just a small path cleared for the models to walk on. Wrapped in ski jackets, scarves and gloves, the just 300 guests invited for the event sipped hot apple juice from Armani-branded thermo flasks as the designer reminded them – and his vast global digital audience – who first saw the connection between skiwear and fashion now so prevalent in the street-style landscape.

Armani was a pioneer of fashion skiwear

Armani is no newcomer to the ski-inspired wardrobe that’s become big business in fashion, on sidewalks as well on slopes. He first created the Neve line in 1985 as a label “dedicated to moments in the mountains, with a focus on outerwear and sports and a stress on that understated elegance which is so essentially Armani,” as he explained before the show. After a hiatus, he brought it back in 2019 as an extension of his successful sports-focused line, EA7. Three years underway, the St Moritz show – hosted in collaboration with the city, MySwitzerland and Swiss Air – was meant to take place in 2020 but was delayed because of the pandemic.

The collection epitomised fashion’s current affinity for a ski-inspired wardrobe

“St Moritz is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and popular mountain destinations in Europe, but it has kept its authenticity, which makes it so special. It is one of my winter retreats: I own a house here,” Armani said, referring to the Japanese-inspired chalet he and his family use for ski trips and occasional Christmas holidays. With its grand hotels and luxury stores, St Moritz served as the perfect setting for the Neve show, which captured the expensive but understated dress code you find on the city’s pistes and streets. Armani styled authentic ski suits, onesies and down jackets in black, navy and checks with fashion-statement faux fur coats, knitted leggings and sweaters that epitomised aprés-ski glamour.

Armani leaves skiing to his Neve customer

As a part-time St Moritz citizen with a huge skiwear business (in the two weeks before the Neve show, Armani sold ski jackets worth €500,000) it may come as a surprise that the designer doesn’t actually ski. He sticks to sledging and walking, or, as he quipped: “I prefer to swim.” Notably, the St Moritz house is Armani’s only cold-climate residence. Other homes include Milan, Broni, Forte dei Marmi, Pantelleria, Portofino, Paris, New York, Antigua and his super-yacht. When he’s not spending Christmas in St Moritz or Broni, “We fly to Antigua to have a little bit of summer right at the peak of winter,” Armani said. “I do love the sun and warm weather, but I also appreciate the different seasons throughout the year. Crisp sunny cold days on the snow are actually beautiful, and I enjoy them a lot.”

The Neve experience was pure alpine glamour

Armani’s guests in St Moritz weren’t just treated to the show in the snow, but the full alpine experience. Booked in the fabled Kulm Hotel, attendees including Emily in Paris’s Lucas Bravo, actor Pepe Barroso, actress Mélanie Laurent and socialite Naty Abascal hit the slopes in head-to-toe Neve skiwear and dined in the city’s classic chalet-style restaurant Salastrines on the eve of the show (where a World Cup-fuelled dinner soon turned into Italian pop music singalongs and a conga line through the wood-clad dining rooms). After the show, Armani took out the ballroom of the Badrutt’s Palace for a formal dinner which concluded in a performance by house favourite Alessandro Ristori and a night of dancing in the downstairs King nightclub. The morning after, guests were ski-lifted to mountain-top restaurant Paradiso for an al fresco luncheon in the alpine snow. As the Italian version of “My Way” that played during the Neve show’s finale reminded us, no one does it quite like Armani.