The Giorgio Armani Privé Spring 2023 Haute Couture collection was a luminescent fantasy in which the clothes dance and shine. Small, jewelled jackets, long skirts, fluid trousers and sheath dresses that create seductive silhouettes.

Diamond motifs were inspired by a painting of Harlequin punctuate the surfaces with colourful geometries in peony pink, turquoise, emerald green and royal blue. The diagonally-checkered painted runway was the star of the collection, here were watery green, mauve, pale blue, and gold. A press note had a line which specifically linked the shades to “the rococo interiors of Venetian palazzos and the splendor of the light.” Armani also subtly located the harlequin within the centuries-old Venetian commedia dell’Arte, and the historic roots of theater.

His collection was calculated to shimmer and twinkle against graphic outlines and blocks of black. The lozenge pattern was embroidered in crystals or patchworked in metallic leather on jackets in varying intensities of color.

There were exits of styles that vaguely read Deco Jazz-Age, others that seemed more 1980s flouncy ball gown. Within a sequence of double-layered transparent dresses, there was suddenly even one with a narrow black band for a top which looked distinctly punk-fetish.