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“I learned to hide anxiety in the pleasure of success,” said Giorgio Armani with the wisdom of someone who is just around the corner of 90 years old. He has dedicated his career to achieving a compromise between elegance and comfort, both in everyday clothes and in aspect men’s and women’s formal wear. He studied medicine, served in the military and founded his own fashion brand after the age of 40, but quickly turned it into a global empire.
Armani is one of the greatest ambassadors of Italian fashion and will turn 90 on July 11, but although he has already prepared the future of the brand behind him, he is not yet ready to retire. We meet 35 aspect Women on the red carpet who made an impact in their time. But at this brand, menswear is equally important and the designer’s presence in cinema goes back decades, so we also added a video showing movie costumes bearing the Italian’s signature.
At 90, Armani confesses that he had to “learn to play the game of time” and perhaps the hepatitis he recently suffered contributed to his mentalization of the age he has reached. In an interview with Vanity Fair Italy which was on the cover of this January, says that she still gets up at 6:30 in the morning to exercise, one of the two obligatory times of the day. “Physical decline is part of us. We have to accept it.”
Giorgio Armani was born on 11 July 1934 in Piacenza, a town in northern Italy. He has an older brother and a younger sister. He says that he inherited from his mother the rigour and the taste for the essential. “These are two things that went hand in hand in the economic situation of my family at the time. We had no money, so necessity became an attitude.” He studied medicine for three years at the University of Milan, then spent two years in the army and was posted to the Military Hospital in Verona. He was also a window dresser, salesman and designer of menswear and worked for some years for Nino Cerruti.
The Giorgio Armani brand was born in 1975 and the first show, that same year, took place at the Palace Hotel in Milan. “I remember that we put the patterns on the fabrics with markers. The truth is that things were not spectacular,” the designer recently confessed. But with a change of soundtrack and scarves on his head, he says that it ended up being “a beautiful ending that saved the situation.” The musical suggestion was from Sergio Galeotti, a life and work partner and driving force behind the brand’s expansion. He would die of AIDS in 1985, leaving a void as big as the heartbreak.
[O vídeo em baixo chama-se “Giorgio Armani and the Tale of Haute Couture” celebra 15 do designer na Alta Costura e foi apresentado em julho de 2020 na semana da moda de Paris. É possível ver na passerelle alguns dos vestidos na galeria no topo deste artigo:]
As he spent the early years of the brand living almost exclusively from his work, the designer hardly realized the significance for the name when Diane Keaton received the only Oscar of her career in 1978, for Annie Hall (1977), dressed by Armani. The designer confesses, however, that the turning point came when he appeared on the cover of the magazine Equipmentin April 1982. In the picture you can see Armani and behind him a woman dressed in a practical and elegant way, with a kind of trench coat and a blouse. The title summed it up: “Giorgio’s magnificent style.”
Armani fashion was noted for relieving masculine suits of their structure and providing the same for feminine ones. “Timeless elegance,” describes Martin Scorsese in an expression that sums up almost 50 years of the Giorgio Armani brand. “No matter who wears them, he makes us all look good. Partly because we feel good wearing his clothes,” wrote the director in a “love letter” dedicated to his “old friend Giorgio Armani” published in Vanity Fairin 2015, when the brand turned 40. “Like all great designers, Giorgio doesn’t just think about the outward appearance on a red carpet, but also about the comfort of everyday life.” Scorsese recalls “decades of work together”, first in advertisements, then in a film about Armani, in a documentary about Italian cinema up to the film “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013) in which the designer made some outfits for Leonardo DiCaprio as the main character.
“It’s obvious from your designs “Giorgio loves cinema,” Scorsese concludes. And, indeed, Armani has a long-standing presence in cinema. Ever since he dressed Richard Gere in the film that launched his career, American Gigolo (1980), the Italian designer’s clothes continued to be the stars of the screen, whether creating an entire wardrobe, for example, for The Untouchables (1987), or wearing only a certain character. The aspect by Kevin Costner in The bodyguard (1992), Brad Pitt and George Clooney in Ocean 13 (2007) or Christian Bale in The Dark Knight Rises (2012), among many other examples that the brand itself summarized in this video:
But Armani is also a big name on red carpets, at social events and even on the stage with music stars. The designer believes that clothes can help express a person’s identity and help them be more honest with themselves. Two weeks after Giorgio Armani celebrated his 90th birthday, the Italian Olympic team will defend the country’s colours at the Paris Olympics wearing Emporio Armani’s kit. He has already made outfits for teams in different sports and is the president of a basketball team.
Giorgio Armani has a very personal journey in fashion. He created an empire that goes far beyond fashion. Armani is the name of a hotel, a museum (ArmaniSillos, in the video below you can see the behind the scenes and the opening of the museum), several clothing lines, beauty products and a host of other products. The Armani empire remains in the hands of its founder and is one of the rare examples of successful fashion brands that do not belong to luxury groups. Giorgio Armani has already decided that, after him, the company will belong to a foundation and also to the family and some outsiders.
In December 2019, the British Fashion Council awarded him a lifetime achievement award. At 85, Armani told Suzy Menkes that he was the last to receive this award and that he would not forgive the English for it. “Maybe it is because I do not make eccentric fashion, the English have just noticed my evolution.” For converted fans or those who have not yet given up on the excellence of Armani’s work, as it is treated in his domain, the various collections continue to respond to the tight fashion calendars.
The most recent show was the Haute Couture show for the Armani Privé line at the end of June. The collection was faithful to the style of the brand and the designer was true to himself, dressed in black, appearing at the end to greet the audience. “When I go out on stage and see people standing and applauding, I feel happy.”
Source: Observadora
