For Armani, Hollywood Gives Back; Giorgio Armani is paid homage by Hollywood's elite, including Jeremy Irons, at a Guggenheim retrospective
by Ruth La Ferla, The New York Times
October 22, 2000
JEREMY IRONS took in the scene, the celebrity-clotted party for the opening of the Giorgio Armani retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum on Wednesday, and leaned against a parapet, cowering a bit in the crush. Summoning his fortitude, Mr. Irons, clad in black-on-black Armani and looking like a reedy impersonation of himself, said, "Armani is always understated." Mr. Irons has worn the designer's clothes on and off for more than 20 years, and he added with a grin, "He knows how to make me look less stuffy than I normally do."
The homage stemmed partly from friendship — just moments before, Mr. Irons had greeted the silver-haired, 66-year- old designer with a bearhug — and partly from a purely theatrical instinct. "Yes, I'm giving a performance — this space is certainly cut out for that," Mr. Irons conceded, with an upward glance at the museum's famously serpentine ramp, which Robert Wilson, who designed the installation, had shrouded in muslin. But Mr. Irons would have performed even without the imposing platform. "As an actor, one tends to come in at the level that's required," he said.
What was required on Wednesday night was nothing more or less than "to wear Mr. Armani's clothes and make the designer happy," Mr. Irons added. He was one of hundreds of guests, a surprising number of them Hollywood gentry, who came prepared to do just that — to be "on" for their style guru.