Giorgio Armani: "Made in Armani!"

“Made in Armani” read the letters projected onto the runway backdrop. So apparently Giorgio Armani has founded his own nation-state—let’s call it Armania. After more than 40 years of carving out his own fashion topography as the single shareholder in Italy’s greatest privately held house, it makes perfect sense.

Today we flew from shore to shore for a snapshot survey of Spring 2018 Armania, the territory below us on the runway defined primarily by color, then texture and fit. The survey began with a long section of stone, silver, and grays.

 Landmarks included a long double-breasted trench in a crushed and crunchy linen mix, a high-cut peacoat in nubby gray wool, an iridescent silver notch-lapeled suit, and a series of high-hemmed jackets with a silky fish-skin gleam that half obscured roughened check patterns below.

A third of the way into our flight we banked into clear pale blue, a maneuver signposted by a double look of white on blue and gray micro-cable knit T-shirt tops with jersey sleeves over blue wool pants. A pale blue shirt under a golden jacquard jacket and blue and gold plaid pants extended the territory.

Then, after a brief beige interlude, we hit a punchily jewel-toned equator that played softened amethyst against sapphire against turquoise in a series of knits, suits, and patterned tailoring. A turbulent passage of patterned knitwear brought us to a long, smoothdescent through the blue again, via pale blue cotton worksuits—into navy executive suiting, casual seersucker jackets, chevron and dotted navy knits, a navy suede field jacket, and a double look of two hybrid cardigan-shirts. We landed in a suite of six looks as pristinely white as the sands of Lampedusa’s Spiaggia dei Conigli.

Mr. Armani’s signature was written on large leather totes and a pale blue T-shirt worn with a silvery jacket. You didn’t need to spot it to know this was Armani country.