Some people scroll through Instagram for, er, unfiltered access to celebrities’ wardrobes; another camp of sartorially minded users, however, fill their feeds with snaps of a quieter presence, namely the aesthetically effortless archival photos popularized by such minimalistic accounts as Nicole Rice’s @simplicitycity. While her followers once had to scour resale sites to get their hands on any of the elusive throwback items (stark white linens from the 80s; 90s J. Crew corduroys; Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s Yohji Yamamoto getups), now their quest has gotten a little bit easier: Giorgio Armani, whose long-ago campaign images have become a calling card for the simpler style set, is bringing back its very first pair of glasses.
Inspired by the oval-shaped, barely-there frames of the 30s and 40s, the aptly-named Icon (now available at Sunglass Hut) is offered in titanium with a matte finish, in gunmetal with blue lenses, in gold with brown lenses, and, in the prescription version, with clear lenses, the last of which is the style Mr. Armani himself wears to this day. “I prefer [glasses] to be lightweight and essential in design not to be invasive,” the Italian fashion designer, who launched his namesake label in 1975, says. “Only in this way do they become one with the wearer, a light filter that captures the smallest of nuances, the frame through which we observe the world.”
A photo from Giorgio Armani’s Fall Winter 1991 campaign.
Taking cues from the brand’s famed Aldo Fallai-lensed portraits, the relaunch campaign was shot by Giulio Rustichelli in such a way that even @simplicitycity’s most devoted fans might be hard-pressed to tell the new black-and-white images apart from their forebears. In a time of increasing focus on sustainability—on the lifespan of our wardrobe—what more could one ask for than an item so subtle and classic that it’s quite literally stood the test of time?
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