FASHION Magazine

Paris, cocktails, a couture fashion show and an intimate din-ner for 600 can always be counted on to turn even the most cold and dreary January evening into a night of glamour. On this occasion, the festivities were to celebrate two of Italian designer Giorgio Armani’s latest creations: his
Giorgio Armani Privé collection, and the debut of Crema Nera ($310, at select Holt Renfrew stores), or “black cream,” his first venture into skin cream.

But it’s the skin care that’s the real story. Made from obsidian—a shiny black stone—extracted from petrified lava found on the volcanic island of Pantelleria off the coast of Sicily, Crema Nera claims to be “one cream for a lifetime.

Armani, who has a home on the island, took to the mud baths and thermal waters that the locals have been enjoying for years. “The volcanic island gives a sense of power, of life, of vitality,” Armani told an enraptured audience at the press conference. During his stays on the island, he noticed a difference in his skin and wondered if the secret could be put into a cream. He enlisted a volcanologist, who found that the mystery was solved in the petrified lava—obsidian pantellerite, a mineral compound that contains silicon, sodium, iron and potassium.

By Kim Izzo

Photography by Carlo Mendoza