During his life, Giorgio Armani took a post-show bow on approximately 180 occasions at the imposing Tadao Ando fashion theater he opened back in 2001. Mr. Armani, who died on Thursday aged 91, was this morning returned to that runway space for the very last time for his lying in state.

As a living force of fashion Mr. Armani had few peers, and arguably no equal. Today in Milan the power of his legacy—the sum of his lifetime’s achievements and actions, now the man himself is gone—began to manifest itself. To my eye, it looked like the start of “ foreverness, ” the quality Ralph Lauren had identified as that legacy in his tribute to the great Italian designer. As Giuseppe Sala, Milan’s mayor, said of Mr. Armani this morning: “It will be impossible to forget him.”

Sala was one of the fi

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