Remembering Giorgio Armani, arbiter of Italian elegance (1934-2025)

Arbiter of elegance Giorgio Armani has died at the age of 91, his eponymous house announced today. Armani launched his line of ready-to-wear in 1975 at the age of 41, using the funds he made from selling his Volkswagen Beetle. Today he leaves behind an empire.

‘In this company, we have always felt like part of a family. Today, with deep emotion, we feel the void left by the one who founded and nurtured this family with vision, passion, and dedication. But it is precisely in his spirit that we, the employees and the family members who have always worked alongside Mr Armani, commit to protecting what he built and to carrying his company forward in his memory, with respect, responsibility, and love,’ read a joint statement from his colleagues.

Remembering Giorgio Armani (1934-2025)

Born into a working-class Italian-Armenian family in the northern Italian town of Piacenza, Armani grew up wearing clothes sewn by his mother that made him the envy of his classmates. ‘They had an inner elegance,’ he said of his parents. ‘They looked rich even though we were poor.’ After school, he took a place at the University of Milan in the Department of Medicine in 1950, but left after three years to join the army. In 1957, he switched his attentions from the infirmary to fashion, taking a job as a window dresser at Milanese department store La Rinascente. Here, he studied the importance of both function and form – and quickly became the best seller in the menswear department.

While at La Rinascente, he met Nino Cerrutti, who asked him to work on the debut menswear line for his grandfather’s mill. Cerrutti was producing 120,000 garments a year in close collaboration with another ten Italian companies, and it was there that Armani honed the unstructured, unlined tailored look that later made his name. In the early 1970s, he met architectural draftsman Sergio Galeotti, who encouraged Armani to break out on his own – the two worked side by side until Galeotti died prematurely in 1985, at the age of 40.

Together, they opened a small office at 37 Corso Venezia in Milan. On 24 July 1975, they founded Giorgio Armani SpA and, in October of that same year, Armani presented his first collection of men's and women’s ready-to-wear for S/S 1976. The collection was bought by Barneys New York and the store advertised the partnership via a short television commercial in which Armani is seen sketching. The voiceover proudly announced: ‘Even though Barneys may not understand his Italian, they fully understand his fashion’.

Armani dressed the 1980s. For most of the decade, his sexy insouciance ruled. He took the intense elegance of Garbo and Dietrich’s androgynous tailoring and added a more fluid line to menswear and a masculine drape to women’s clothes. His silhouette stemmed from the suit – Armani de-stiffened the shoulder-padded period with fuller trousers and a softer line. Famously, he designed the iconic wardrobe of Richard Gere’s louche lothario Julian in American Gigolo (1980). Gere’s look – part pomp and part subdued – caused a change in the menswear market due to its more relaxed style. The Armani look exudes a knowing richness, a bashful certainty. The pockets of Julian’s tailored linen jackets sag just so, the colours are muted and chic – Gere’s character takes great pleasure in dressing but with great ease. This is Armani’s legacy.

The 5 April 1982 edition of Time magazine had a smouldering Armani on the cover with the cover line ‘Giorgio’s Gorgeous Style’. The same year, he won the Council of Fashion Designers of America International award. In 1996, he opened a sprawling flagship at 760 Madison Avenue to much fanfare. By this point, the label was one of the leading names in fashion with the introduction of new product lines, including GA Le Collezioni, Giorgio Armani Underwear and Swimwear, and Giorgio Armani Accessories. In 2000, the Guggenheim in New York hosted a vast retrospective of 25 years of his work, which ignited debate about the validity of showing fashion within a museum setting – a debate that Armani’s clothes helped to win. He worked on over 200 films, including the trailblazing Pulp Fiction (1994), and made the two-button suits worn by the character Bruce Wayne in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012).

Mr Armani was the sole shareholder of Giorgio Armani SpA, making it one of the few leading fashion brands not reliant on international investment, with a retail distribution chain of over 500 stand-alone stores around the world. Continually, he rebuffed offers from both the LVMH and Gucci groups to purchase his company, revelling instead in his buoyant independence.

Throughout his career, Armani understood the importance of building a brand around his clothes. In 2000, for instance, he hired Japanese architect Tado Ando to transform a former chocolate factory in the canal district of Milan into both an office and a showroom. The year also marked the launch of Armani/Casa – a union of fashion and furniture. Some two decades earlier, he’d designed a sophisticated table light with a triangular shade that today remains at the core of Armani/Casa.

Armani worked doggedly on his own brand of style, striving to please no one but himself. He received several commendations from the Italian government in recognition of his long service in promoting Italian craftsmanship, including the title of Commendatore dell’Ordine al Merito della Repubblica, and Grand’Ufficiale dell’Ordine al Merito della Repubblica. In 2008, he was awarded the French Legion d'Honneur, and he also held honorary doctorates and degrees from the Royal College of Art and Central Saint Martins in London and the Accademia di Brera in Milan. In 2021, he was awarded one of his home country’s highest honours, the Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit.

Armani also served as guest editor of Wallpaper’s October 2022 legends issue. In it, he enlisted Sir Paul Smith for a wide-ranging conversation – from role models, design signatures and technology, to what makes them happy – which took place at Armani’s home in Milan. ‘Consistency to me is a virtue, not least because it allows one to grow and change within a definite frame. That, for me, is way more effective than flipping ideas every six months. There is something reassuring and even strengthening to sticking to one’s guns,’ he said. He also revealed his creative inspirations, which spanned Giorgio Morandi, Coco Chanel, Henri Matisse, Issey Miyake and Eileen Gray, among others.

In 2024, he marked his 90th birthday with a special show in New York, returning to the city for the first time since Armani Privé arrived there in the 1990s. The display drew from perennial sources of inspiration, such as 1940s Hollywood and codes of cinematic Italian glamour. Presented before 650 celebrities, editors, and lifelong friends in a decadent hall within the Park Avenue Armory, the show was about ‘remembering without nostalgia’ – a delicate balance that Mr Armani mastered at every turn of his inimitable career.

In June, just before the Milan S/S 2026 season got underway, the designer was hospitalised and unable to take the closing bows for his final Giorgio Armani and Emporio Armani collections. Though he may have been physically absent from the shows – and the Armani Privé show in Paris that followed – his presence was felt in every lightweight, unmistakably tailored silhouette that came down the runway. It is a presence that will be deeply missed in Milan and across the fashion world – but one that will undoubtedly continue to inspire ideas of elegance, innovation and enduring style for generations to come.

In 1990, Martin Scorsese filmed Armani for a documentary entitled Made in Milan. In it, he says: ‘I don’t own what you might call “a designer wardrobe”, I have blue jackets, blue pullovers, grey pants. In my mind, it’s like a uniform. You have to know yourself. And your own body, and your own personality to know how to dress.’ It is this confidence, this knowing, that makes Mr Armani an enduring icon.