Milan Fashion Week: Giorgio Armani Spring 2011's Desert Dusk

And so we've reached the twilight hours of Milan Fashion Week. While fashion travelers continued on to Paris for a glimpse at Spring/Summer 2011, Giorgio Armani looked elsewhere to another set of nomads--the Tuareg peoples of North Africa, their indigo blue veils, and the dark beauty of the desert at dusk.

The entire collection was done in rich, velvety midnight blue, as warm as the night sky over the Sahara. Tightly wrapped silk turbans and tribal necklaces were about as literal as Armani got; his models, sashaying against a backdrop of shifting sands and moaning winds, were altogether slicker, sleeker, urban nomads. The silhouette was long, languid, and impossibly lean, with slim tunics layered under sporty leather jackets and fluted silk skirts over gauzy, loosely tapered pants. A spiral of crystals and sequins over draped evening gowns twinkled like the heavens above the Sahara; it's a loose interpretation of pastoral, nomadic desert wear, but the seemingly endless layers and textural richness did impart an equally dark, mysterious quality.

Opulent and quietly exotic, Armani's moody, mesermizing desert romanticism made for a collection that was far more intricate and diverse than its navy monotone would suggest.

Photos: vogue.com