How do I know? Because I watched him do it, interviewing him and reporting on his business for three decades for the Times of London.
In the 1980s Armani became the first designer to rip – literally – the stuffing out of tailoring by introducing looser fitting but still flattering clothes. He blurred the lines between smart and casual, masculine and feminine to create a new, soft, drapey silhouette for women and men. His trademark slouchy elegance set the tone for fashion for the next 25 years and was reflected in the rise of sportswear and the introduction of new business dress codes, such as ‘dress down’ and ‘smart casual.’
He made men comfortable with the idea of buying and wearing fashion for the first time – and not just Samuel L Jackson and David Beckham. I – like many men – still remember the first navy two-button, soft-shoulder suit I bought in Emporio Armani on Brompton Road in London. It cost £500 but, wearing it, I felt a million dollars.
In his house, a converted 17th-century 3,000 sq ft palazzo on Via Borgonuovo in central Milan, he once summed up his approach telling me: “I am most proud of the deconstruction of design. The difference between me and other designers is that my aesthetic does not dominate. My aim is never to overwhelm the character of the wearer. You see many designers have resorted to producing headline-grabbing, over-the-top costumes for effect. People in Armani look themselves.”
To market all his wares, Armani invented red-carpet dressing – translation: celebrity marketing – way before anyone had imagined Instagram. In the early eighties he became the first designer to decamp to Los Angeles for Oscars week to dress the likes of Robert de Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer. Soon, almost every celebrity wanted to wear Armani, as I found out when he took me to the Vanity Fair Oscars party in Los Angeles in 2007 and took great pride in introducing me to every star “wearing me”.
He went on to leverage his Hollywood connections to get into the movies themselves, creating wardrobes for American Gigolo, The Untouchables, Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction and The Wolf of Wall Street.
Back in Milan he became the first designer to divide his brand into almost a dozen mini-labels, from the cheap Armani Jeans and A/X Armani Exchange, through Emporio Armani and Collezioni, up to the wildly expensive Black Label and Privé couture. He created accessories, including watches, and fragrances for each. This ‘brands within a brand’ strategy made his style accessible to everyone – whatever their budget – without cheapening the overall Armani name.
In the 1990s he went further, diversifying into make-up and skincare, homewares with his casa range and he opened restaurants, cafes and later in the noughties hotels in Milan and Dubai. There was even an Armani Mercedes car. At the opening of his first hotel in the Burj Khalifa in Dubai in 2010 he told me: “I have invented ‘Armani world.’ An entire story.”
This ‘something for everyone’ made Armani more than a label. It became the first complete lifestyle fashion brand worth today almost $10 billion. Today, consumers can – if they really want to – live Armani 24-hours a day. They can wake up in Armani sheets, go to the gym in Armani sportswear, have breakfast in an Armani cafe, sipping cappuccino out of an Armani cup. They can go to work in an Armani suit, wearing an Armani watch. When the day is over they can drink an Armani martini.
Over dinner in one of his branded Nobu restaurants – a joint venture with the Japanese super chef Nobu Matsuhisa and De Niro – they can plan their next holiday in an Armani resort before returning home to a square of Armani chocolate in their Armani bed.
It was a lifestyle which the CEO, founder, chairman, creative director, chief designer and owner lived and which sustained him. When I first interviewed him three decades ago he answered my tentative question about retirement by exclaiming: “Give up work? Work is my life. I am not one to sit back and take the easy way out. Work excites me, it keeps me fresh and on my toes. Why would I want to stop?” He was working until his final days, communicating by phone and Zoom with designers in Milan working on his collections for next month’s fashion week.
He was a hard-charging boss – he used to exhort his staff to “pull their balls out” when he felt they were not working as creatively as they could, even the women. But the man who was born into a working-class family in Piacenza, just outside Milan, and who began his fashion career as a window dresser in La Rinascente, the leading department store in Italy’s commercial capital, was humble.
“When I sold my VW Beetle to buy cloth to found my business, my ambitions were limited to making a success of clothing and even then I imagined working on a fairly small scale – selling to Italy and a few select retailers abroad. The way the Armani label has grown is something I could never have imagined,” he told me.
He had simple tastes, which may seem an odd thing to say of a man who had private jets, yachts and many homes in locations such as St Tropez and Antigua. But he was happiest at his modest stone house on Pantelleria, the tiny volcanic island off the coast of Sicily. “At the time I first visited, there was nothing on Pantelleria; no running water, no electricity. I had to bring it all. But I was in love with the place and I still am. I wear blue shorts and blue T-shirts, and go for walks and swim.”
Critics complained that his style was so simple it was boring. The New Yorker once dismissed the brand as “staid and repetitive… more Volkswagen than Mercedes.” Signor Armani was having none of it. “I avoid explosive fashion because explosions don’t last. They disappear immediately and leave nothing but ashes,” he retorted. “I believe that you should be true to your own vision and hope that a constituency out there shares your taste. Fashion’s purpose is to make it easier and more elegant to live. Otherwise what is it about? It’s just a game. Worth nothing.”
He has been true to his vision for 50 years and tens of millions of customers around the world have been true to him. Farewell, the maestro of Milan. You did it all, you did it first and you did it right.
