Despite the hyperbolic and fleeting tendencies of the fashion industry, few designers have had the impact of Giorgio Armani, who has died in Milan at the age of 91.
The new look and attitude the designer offered 50 years ago is today largely taken for granted and, at first glance, seems rather unassuming. But from the outset, Armani’s focus and determination was to provide his customers with an easier way of dressing that was at once practical, sophisticated and thoughtful, yet unpretentious, powerful and subtle.
His suits required little effort on the part of the wearer, whose individuality and identity were meant to shine rather than being overwhelmed by his clothes. His approach to tailoring coincided with the growing awareness of health and fitness in the 1970s and 1980s.
Armani’s body-conscious approach soon garnered attention in Hollywood, and he was asked to provide the wardrobe for Richard Gere in the now cult-classic 1980 film American Gigolo.
Humble beginnings
Born in 1934 in the small northern Italian town of Piacenza, Armani was originally destined to be a country family doctor. Before founding his own fashion house in 1975 relatively late in life, at the age of 41, Armani began in the fashion industry as a window dresser for the Milanese department store La Rinascente.
In 1961, he was hired by stylist and businessman Nino Cerruti to work in the Cerruti family’s textile factory. This new and fertile environment proved seminal to Armani’s future in textile development and would determine his own aesthetic formula.
While working at Cerruti, designing for the firm’s Hitman menswear collection, Armani proverbially and literally took the stuffing out of traditional Italian tailoring, offering men a modern attitude and a novel, less rigid way of moving and living in their jackets and suits.
Quickly, and throughout his 50-year career, the now iconic multi-purpose Armani jacket provided men and women alike armour as much as comfort and support for the body underneath.
Encouraged by his romantic and business partner Sergio Galeotti, an architect who remained Armani’s business partner until his untimely death in 1984, Armani officially founded his own fashion house in July 1975.
He quickly changed the vocabulary of both menswear and womenswear: he incorporated and adapted textiles traditionally reserved for men’s tailoring for his womenswear collections while at the same time softening the fabrics and silhouettes of his menswear. Women appeared stronger, independent, resilient and ready to take on the workplace of the 1980s, while the Armani man was less aggressive and instead attractive and glamourous.
