Giorgio Armani

Giorgio Armani’s inventions are bafflingly timeless and so specific that they seem to come from — and make sense for — every era. And now more than ever. As menswear is U-turning from streetwear to tailoring, and nobody wants to ditch the comfort of a tracksuit, who else to go to than the man who radicalised and softened the traditional suit like no one before? Mr. Armani’s clothes are outlandish and modest, modern and classic, uniform and deeply personal, familiar and weird all at once. Mostly, they’re all very Armani, because at the whopping age of 89, the designer still runs the ship with an unwavering eye for every detail. “While some people might accuse me of being dictatorial, my achievements show that I’ve always been right,” he writes, with a modicum of irony.

But do we even know who Mr. Armani is? There was a time when people thought he lived a sort of monk-like existence, as he puts it in the following interview. They thought he was hiding out in his Milan headquarters like a hermit. How wrong the people were. Mr. Armani is in thrall to the magic of moviemaking, admires Jean Paul Gaultier and Dries Van Noten and scores his funkiest summer looks at local markets on indulgent holidays. According to his book, Mr. Armani will one day leave his legacy to the two people he has tasked with the continuation of his empire: his niece Silvana, who runs the womenswear studios, and Leo Dell’Orco, his head of menswear for almost 40 years. “And that is how it will be,” he writes. Not that Mr. Armani really wants to stop; he even struggles to finish his autobiography, taking two final chapters to try and put the story to an end. He just wants to go on. And indeed, look at what he’s done, what he does, and where Giorgio Armani will take things next. And watch the world follow.

Here are a few concise background facts: Giorgio Armani was born on 11 July 1934 in Piacenza, Italy. After a false start studying medicine and a stint in the Italian army, he joined the Rinascente department store in Milan as an assistant merchandiser and later became a menswear buyer. In 1965, he segued over to the design studio of Nino Cerruti, where he learned and plied his skills in tailoring and creating clothing. He became a designer for hire, lending his talents to Krizia, Loewe, Ungaro, and Zegna (among many others). In 1975 he established Giorgio Armani S.p.A. and showed his first eponymous collection. Like Alexander in Rome before him, Giorgio Armani would go on to conquer the known world.

In the late 1960s, menswear was fussy and heavily constructed. Modernism gave way
to dandyism to create what American writer Jay Cocks once described as “racetrack contours and crotch-cleaving pants that made any man, in profile, look like a bisected hourglass.” Menswear was rigid and restrictive and at the same time stylised and prone to peacockery. The counterculture of the 1960s had chipped away at postwar conservatism. In the ’70s, a new masculine identity emerged, one that was freer and more liberated. It required a new look, and Giorgio Armani had an idea of his own.

Armani’s quiet revolution can be summed up in a single object: the unconstructed blazer. It was a rebuttal to traditional tailoring and, by default, conventional masculinity. Armani gutted the tailored jacket. He ripped out the lining and inner construction and replaced the heavy and inflexible fabrics with ones of a lighter hand and softer drape. His proposition was not entirely new: it was preceded by the Neapolitan jacket, an Italian innovation of the 1930s created by renowned tailor Vincenzo Attolini and famously sported by the then Duke of Windsor. But that had been 40 years earlier. In the time since, Italy had risen, fallen, lost a war, and was on the rise again, and menswear had shifted a world away. When Armani debuted the unconstructed blazer in 1975, the new soft look was nothing but startlingly contemporary.

Ease was the operative word. Armani proposed a sensual and relaxed look at a time when men’s fashion was uptight and rigid. He advocated for a comfort and lightness that mirrored men’s changing lifestyles and aspirations. Armani bestowed upon menswear a casual yet highly refined elegance. It was a runaway success. The 1970s was the birth of Italian fashion as we know it today — an industry that rivals the quality, creativity, and market share of Paris. The era saw a new wave of eager ready-to-wear designers with something new to say — something that traditional tailoring or alta moda, in their ivory towers, could not. Included in Armani’s cohort were Gianni Versace, Gianfranco Ferré, Fendi, Missoni and more. And while each of them enjoyed incredible success, it was Armani’s arc, his quiet revolution, that would become most synonymous with this benchmark moment in fashion history.

The pair were partners in work and life. They met in 1966 when Armani was still designing menswear for Nino Cerruti and moonlighting in womenswear in the still-burgeoning world of Italian ready-to-wear. They met at a nightclub, La Capannina. Galeotti was a hungry and ambitious 20-year-old architect and the two hit it off right away. Armani confided his hopes and ambitions to Galeotti and was rewarded with Galeotti’s unwavering devotion.

“The more I spoke to him about my experiences, the goals I had achieved as well as my aspirations, the more he understood my potential,” Armani divulges in ‘Per Amore’, his recent autobiography. “He lived in Versilia and yet wanted to move to Milan to test himself, but above all to experience this adventure together with me.” Armani found him a job in Milan as a draughtsman at the architectural firm Peressutti and Rogers and the two decided to move in together, finding an apartment on Viale Lazio.

Eventually, the pair began working together, with Galeotti handling the business and administrative affairs of Armani’s private design studio. Apparently, it was at Galeotti’s insistence that Armani — who up until that time had only been designing for others — should produce and launch an eponymous collection. It was Galeotti who convinced Armani that he should sell his white Volkswagen to help raise $10,000 in start-up capital. They founded Giorgio Armani S.p.A. together in 1975. The 1980s saw a huge boom in fashion, as demand for conspicuous, status-enhancing clothing ballooned (along with the silhouette). Armani and Galeotti’s business flourished. Italian fashion had arrived on the global stage, wrenching away the grip on power previously held by the French. It was against this backdrop of success and prosperity that the despair and devastation of the AIDS epidemic unfolded. The first cases were reported in 1981, and the number quickly escalated around the world.

Knowledge about what caused the condition was scarce, stigma and fear ran high, and as the ’80s went on, the casualties began to mount. The gay community was ravaged, as were the industries that gay men inhabited. Fashion was among the hardest hit. “Everything happened during the same year,” Armani recalls in his autobiography. “The news of Sergio’s illness, his immediate hospitalisation, the helplessness, the courage, on my part as well, to insist on talking about the future, as if nothing were wrong.” At this point, the pair were no longer romantically involved, a fact that did nothing to ease the pain of saying goodbye and watching someone you love deteriorate before your eyes. Galeotti passed away in Milan on 14 August 1985, at the age of 40.

So crucial had Galeotti been to the business that it was presumed by the industry at large that Armani would call it quits and fold the company. He did not. “Some said a designer cannot be a businessman too,” he would later tell Ingrid Sischy, in an interview in the catalogue for his early 2000s Guggenheim show. “It was very difficult, though. I didn’t really know my firm. I had left a lot of the responsibility to Sergio.” Slowly but surely Armani did learn, assuming all management duties. “I don’t know how I did it, but I did it. And it is that, it is he [Galeotti] who gives me the strength even now to continue.” Giorgio Armani triumphed over tragedy and emerged more fortified than before as a designer, chairman, and chief executive.

Starring Richard Gere and Lauren Hutton and released in 1980, ‘American Gigolo’ has become a case study in how cinematic storytelling and fashion can synergise to create a bona fide pop culture moment. The film is credited with launching Gere’s career and introducing Armani to America. Part of the enduring appeal of ‘American Gigolo’ is that it is stylised but at the same time low-key and understated. The film’s cinematography, location, architecture, set design and wardrobe combine to create a sweeping aesthetic statement despite none of the individual elements themselves being particularly vivid. Julian, played by Richard Gere, lives in a modernist bachelor pad in Los Angeles. He wears fine clothing in beautiful natural fabrics and drives a Mercedes-Benz 450 SL. His life is beautifully art-directed, a studied composition. Though meant to contrast with sordid clandestine activities, the illusion is nonetheless solid. In one memorable scene, Julian is prepping for a job, sorting through what to wear, and there it is on labels peeking out from inside the collars of the shirts and jacket: Giorgio Armani.

From just a handful of shots, Armani’s name became synonymous with beautiful people, beautiful worlds, affluence and means. And not only with these, but with sex appeal as well. Julian wears beautiful clothes and lives in a beautiful home, and he pays for all that by selling his beautiful body. Morality and ethics aside, it is a potent fantasy and perfect for selling clothes. The importance of ‘American Gigolo’ to Armani’s success story cannot be overstated. Not only did it heighten the public’s awareness of his designs, it marked the beginning of the designer’s long and fruitful relationship with Hollywood.

Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel founded a millinery practice in 1910 and eventually ascended to become one of France’s greatest couturiers. She is closely associated with the boyish garçonne look. Indeed, Chanel took cues from menswear and adapted them to women’s fashion, allowing the fairer sex to finally dress with the ease and certainty of a man.

Her aesthetic was sober, but not plain. Buffering Chanel’s spare sensibilities was an air of intellectual sophistication. She proposed that black be worn outside of mourning (and was mocked to her face for it by fellow fashion designer Paul Poiret). Chanel ran with the boys and dressed like them too. She designed her clothes accordingly: jersey, cardigans, sportswear and tweed. She spliced men’s wardrobe staples into women’s haute couture. Chanel’s truest essence can be described with a single word: modernism. So, what does this all have to do with Armani?

If you were to ask Giorgio Armani who his favourite designer was, he would tell you it’s Chanel. This can partly be explained by timing. In the early 1970s, as Armani was maturing as a designer and as Italian ready-to-wear was still burgeoning, a craze for art deco and the 1930s swept through fashion. It is from the ’30s that the ’70s derived the long, lean silhouette. Looking to the ease and sensual elegance of the past, designers adapted the period’s soft dressing for their modern times. Chanel ruled the 1930s, and her work from this era would leave an indelible impression on Armani.

But one suspects his affinity for the designer is much more intrinsic and integral than that. There are many parallels between the two. Chanel and Armani both share a love of simplicity and luxurious austerity. They also revel in restraint and unflinching modernity. And even that iconic shade of Armani greige references Chanel’s signature use of the colour beige.

Armani’s masterstroke in womenswear was placing his men’s unconstructed blazer on a female dress form. As alluring as his signature jacket was on a man, it was undeniably even more so on a woman — mannish but also feminine, powerful but also supremely elegant. Armani’s “borrowing” from his men’s collection synced with the emergence of a new fashion customer: an independent, well-paid woman who needed to navigate the business world of men. Enter Armani’s soft power dressing.

From the 1980s onward, he would become the designer of choice for women in need of comfortable, modern clothing that could command authority in a room full of testosterone. What draws Chanel and Armani together is that Armani is ultimately a feminist: someone who believes that men and women are equal. If we look at the history of fashion as a whole and consider each designer in light of the values demonstrated in their clothes, it should be plainly evident to all that Giorgio Armani is Chanel’s true spiritual heir.

Armani’s interest in the East began with his seminal collection for Autumn and Winter 1980/81. He was an ardent fan of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa and was taken by the splendour and scale of his 1980 feudal epic ‘Kagemusha’. The film’s period costumes, filled with samurai armour and traditional kimonos, left an indelible impression and catalysed a new approach in Armani’s repertoire. He sampled and referenced their shapes and details and integrated them into the softly tailored silhouettes he’d pioneered only a few years earlier. The Japanese-inspired collection would turn out to be a huge commercial disaster, but it remains one of the designer’s favourites and among his most influential.

Historically, Western clothing is based on the principle of imposing structured silhouettes onto the figure, i.e. tailoring. Tailored garments are rigid and restrictive, and they require rigorous construction not only to maintain shape but also to withstand the stress of the body’s movements as it pulls and tugs on the garment’s seams. In the East, both near and far, traditional clothes are based on the concept of joining loose expanses of cloth to create garments that rest softly on the body and allow for a full range of movement, not to mention comfort. Armani bridged that gap. As costume historian Caroline Rennolds Milbank has aptly noted, “In his logical progression from the soft jacket, Armani has experimented with various elements and proportions that point east.” Tunics, pyjamas, Nehru collars and Mao jackets are recurring favourites. Armani has blended East and West, reconciling the economical lines and relaxed volumes of the former with the workmanship and familiar tropes of the latter. From Armani’s compelling amalgamation came a supremely elegant and cosmopolitan look.

The Armani brand was founded to address the needs and dreams of a new way of life, and it has duly expanded as the world continues to evolve. In 1981 he launched Emporio Armani, Armani Junior, and Armani Jeans against the conventional wisdom of the fashion industry, which asserted that lower-priced diffusion labels diluted a designer’s cachet. He released his first women’s fragrance, Armani Femme by Giorgio Armani, in 1982 and his first men’s fragrance, Armani Eau Pour Homme, in 1984. In ’88 he introduced Giorgio Armani Occhiali (eyewear). In ’91 he launched A/X Armani Exchange. The year 1997 saw the addition of watches, and in 2000 he expanded into beauty. Armani made a major entry into furniture and interiors with the art deco-inspired Armani/Casa in 2000. In 2005 he launched his Armani Privé haute couture collection. Why not?

Through his prolific success, Armani has accrued a fortune that has afforded him the most premium and luxurious of living arrangements. Of all the many things he’s designed, the most telling and genuinely intriguing is his superyacht, Maìn, built in 2008 and named using one of his mother’s nicknames. At 65 metres long and able to accommodate up to twelve guests, the vessel is, naturally, outfitted with custom Armani/Casa furniture and fixtures. Armani supervised the design himself, insisting on a tricky window and hull design to create the illusion that each deck is suspended weightlessly on top of the next. The pièce de résistance: the entire ship is painted a deep, murky green, making it nearly invisible on the horizon when at sea.

Armani’s reach is far and wide; his label exists in as many permutations as the market can reasonably support. It is known throughout the industry that Mr. Armani personally approves every single style and stock-keeping unit (SKU) that bears his name. There are Armani hotels, bookstores, chocolates, jams, and even floral arrangements. Mr. Armani is the gravitational centre of a lifestyle universe, and no one exemplifies it better than him.

The little-seen documentary is a series of fly-on-the-wall and fantasy montages, all accompanied by a hypnotic voiceover from Giorgio Armani, talking about his work, his clothes and his beloved adopted home. “Milan is my chosen city. It’s a city that allows you to express yourself and respects you…if you have something to say.” If the minotaur is part man, part bull and the centaur is part man, part horse, this film makes you search for a word for someone who’s part man, part Milan. The exquisite shots of clinky dining rooms, silent interiors and chatty aperitivi offer a dreamy sense of the city’s intimacy, exclusivity and privacy — the ideal setting for the world of Armani.

Armani’s famous attention to detail is on full display throughout, as he throws and thumbs fabrics, considers hair and make-up and offers models pastoral instructions on how to walk. And there are useful directives on how to dress. “I’ve always insisted upon rigorous simplicity. I can’t stand exhibitionism,” for example, or “Sometimes if I want to look elegant, I’ll put on a striped tie,” or “Why blue? Because I think blue looks good on me,” and perhaps most importantly for all: “Be faithful to yourself.”

Scorsese went full throttle on this sub-30-minute documentary, pulling together an elite team of award-winning artists to make it. There’s sensational cinematography from Néstor Almendros (Oscar winner for best cinematography in 1978), a transcendental score from Howard Shore (the proud owner of three Oscars, three Golden Globes and four Grammys) and Japanese drums by Kitaro (who has both a Grammy and a Golden Globe for his new age music). As a devoted film lover, Armani must have been honoured by the treatment he received as the subject of ‘Made in Milan’, but he also admits in the film that he wishes he’d made movies himself. “I would like to have been a director. This passion is still in my blood.” In an Armani universe so total, it’s surprising he never made one.