London Fashion Week Emporio Show Fizzes With Playful Touches..Fashionweekly..On Fow24news.com

It isn't every day that two of fashion's biggest names decide to show during London Fashion Week. First off was Donatella Versace who put Versus, her younger line, on the catwalk here - in the imposing sleek minimalism of Central St Martins Fashion College,

with whose alumni she has often collaborated. A few hours later it was Giorgio Armani's turn.

The two designers have often been pitched as each other's arch nemesis , mainly because their respective aesthetics - his is less is more, hers is more is more - represent the polar opposites of Italian taste. But on one thing the agree: London is the source of all creativity, or so said Mr Armani when we chatted before tonight's show.

That doesn't mean he can't critique the city's style. Two nights ago, he was dining at Cipriani’s in London (“stupendo!”) when he couldn't help but wince at a group of women who walked in. “They just had on too much of…everything, ” he says. Except length. “They were wearing something a supermodel might wear, but without a supermodel’s legs”.We’re chatting in a former tobacco wharf in East London, the site of the Emporio Armani show. Normally this would take place in the purpose-built Armani theatre in Milan. He last showed in London for a Bono- related charity event 11 years ago. But the Emporio Armani store on London’s Bond street has just had a major facelift. So London seemed a good audience this season.The city gives off energy everywhere you look," he says. At 83, he’s still mentally re-arranging everything around him to make it more aesthetically harmonious. From his hotels to his scents, from flowers to clothes, he has admirably inflammable opinions. Asked what he thought of Balenciaga (the ultra-cool label-of-the-moment ) appropriating the enormous shoulders he made so ubiquitous in the 1980s, he responds: “Good Luck…really, women don’t need to wear those kind of jackets anymore in the workplace. They can wear a chiffon dress”.

It so happens there were little chiffon dresses in this Emporio collection, with dainty frills rippling across the bodices and the occasional crab print scuttling down their fronts. There were jackets too, but small shouldered – iridescent bombers, shrunken, single breasted, lattice-work styles, and a particularly chic, slouchily deconstructed red and white Prince of Wales check blazer.

Trousers had a major stride-on part – as they do in many other collections this season. Sitting on the navel, or just below, these were a desirable marriage of feminine contouring and masculine swagger. When he wants, he makes some of the most elegant trousers around, and these – gimmick free, with roomy pockets – will be on many shopping lists next season.

This was a strong Emporio Collection, fizzing with playful touches, such as mesh-trainer-bootees and underwater-inspired prints and weaves, while offering plenty of clothes to wear to work or dinner. Increasingly however, there’s little difference between what we wear to work or play.