Giorgio Armani will debut the new Armani Casa collection in Los Angeles in West Hollywood on 16th November 2001. Located at 157 N. Robertson on The Avenues of Art & Design, it is the second Armani Casa store in the United States. The first opened in New York late August 2001 in the SoHo neighborhood.
Launched last October in the new Armani/Via Manzoni 31 mega-store in Milan, Armani Casa is a comprehensive and significant home collection, featuring much more than just home accessories and fabric furnishings. Instead Giorgio Armani has concentrated on creating a complete line including furniture, tableware, lighting, linens and decorative objects. The collection is neither minimalist nor trendy. It is neither decoration nor design, but rather a combination of the two.
The collection’s roots lie in simplicity and purity, practical shapes, luxury materials and fabrics and craftsmanship from around the world. The idea is sophisticated comfort, which is at the heart of Armani’s fashion philosophy.
Giorgio Armani says, “I undertook a huge project, knowing that it would be both risky and personally challenging. I asked myself, ‘What can I do that is rooted in design, yet different. That is modern yet contains references to the past, and has my signature?’ I found the answer in my fashion philosophy and the beginning of my career as a designer, when I created the Armani suit, which was a classic, basic suit but cut in a fresh, new way.”
The new Armani Casa stores were designed by Giorgio Armani in collaboration with Janson Goldstein Associates. Similar in design to the Via Manzoni store, the Los Angeles store is 6300 square feet and takes up one level. Natural light plays a key role in the design of the store via skylights. The flexible space, with polished concrete floors, have a loft-like sensibility in which home vignettes and furnished units can be created.
In addition to Milan, Armani Casa is available at Harrods in London in an exclusive 300 square meter boutique, and in freestanding stores in Athens, Greece and Paris, France. Other cities slated for store openings next years include Tokyo and Seoul.
