Happy 50th anniversary, Mr Armani. Your decision to sell your VW Beetle to buy cloth to found your fashion label on 24 July 1975 changed the way I, and millions of people across the world, dress for the better.
When I was growing up, men wore stiff, heavy suits from Savile Row if you had the money, or from the high street – Marks & Spencer and Topman – if you were on a budget. It was a similar story in most countries. But then your first UK Emporio Armani store opened on Brompton Road in London’s Knightsbridge and everything changed.
Your suit jackets were lightweight, unstructured and had a rolled, soft shoulder. Some were more like cardigans than jackets. The trousers came either flat-fronted or with pleats, so you could choose the silhouette you liked. You were, as you put it, ‘an innovator, rebelling against the formality of tailoring and replacing it with something more modern’. Your soft silhouette proved wildly popular among both men and women.
I felt I could breathe – and move – for the first time in the first suit I bought: a lightweight navy two button. It worked for the office and for nights out, including first dates. It was the beginning of a – very expensive – love affair. I moved on to Collezioni on New Bond Street and later your Giorgio Armani boutique on Sloane Street. I bought your slim-fit shirts, ties, a dinner suit, shoes, bags. The caramel leather jacket was a pricey mistake. I thought I looked like a Serie A Milanese footballer but the truth was I could pass for an unlicensed minicab driver in Wolverhampton.
Taking a bow after his ‘One Night Only’ fashion show at his Dubai hotel, 2021
I stayed in your albergo above your store in Milan’s Via Manzoni and at your hotel in Dubai. I ate in your Nobu-branded restaurant and your caffè in New York – your favourite tortelli di ricotta e spinaci, if I recall. There were sunglasses, pens, watches and fragrances, too.
You and I first met on a freezing January day in 2004. You were in your office in Milan, twisting your wire-frame glasses like worry beads. You explained your design philosophy: ‘Smart but not too formal, fashionable but not too trendy.’ It’s one that has never stopped working, whether you are David Beckham or Cate Blanchett. Or me. Or YOU readers. Who hasn’t bought, been given or desired something with an Armani label in their lifetime?
We met dozens more times in the two decades between then and now as I covered your business for many different newspapers and magazines. You even invited me back to yours – a converted 17th-century 3,000sq ft palazzo on Via Borgonuovo in central Milan – where you introduced me to your two most important companions over the years: your cats Charlie and Angel. (Sorry, again, for pressing the eject button on your stereo, which revealed that rather than the fashionable music you told me you liked, you prefer the Spice Girls.)
With one of his beloved cats in 1982
That was a rare occasion when you did not speak your mind with your characteristic brutal honesty, no matter the consequences. In an industry where most designers are so scared of causing offence and sparking a consumer backlash that they only utter bland platitudes, you were and are a much-needed breath of fresh air. When I interviewed you for The Sunday Times you condemned Prada’s ‘conceptual fashion’ – collections that start with an idea or a theme rather than simply a desire to show off chic clothes that suit the weather – as ‘very niche, very elite, snob fashion’. You revealed that Gianni Versace once told you: ‘I dress sluts. You dress church ladies.’
You lampooned anyone who had cosmetic surgery for vanity reasons, especially LA ladies with comedy boob jobs. ‘A small breast does not have to become big,’ you said. ‘I prefer to look at a natural woman. A woman should be courageous to become older, not be desperate to look younger than her age. With time, a woman’s body is better. As a woman goes to work, has babies, she is strong. She has character.’
You caused a stir when you exhorted gay men to stop going to the gym so much – ‘I don’t like muscle boy’ – and to stop dressing gay. ‘A homosexual man is a man 100 per cent. He does not need to dress homosexual. When homosexuality is exhibited to the extreme – to say, “Ah, you know I’m homosexual” – that has nothing to do with me.’
With Richard Gere and Lee Radziwill in 1988.
Ask anyone today to name a fashion designer and I’d bet good money they will reply ‘Giorgio Armani’. That’s because, in many ways, you are not a fashion designer. You consistently create the understated style we crave, and you do not veer wildly to extremes, staging splashy catwalk shows simply to garner social media posts. ‘I design for the public, not the fashion industry,’ you explained over an espresso in your hotel in Dubai. ‘I use my creativity to help people to live my style – a simple, elegant style. 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.’
You were true to your values and never gave up, not even when the critics said that ‘Signor Beige’ created clothes so dull they were ‘Gap for grown-ups’. You never succumbed to French bearing gifts. While Italian family firms around you – Gucci, Fendi, Loro Piana, Bulgari, Brioni, Bottega Veneta – sold up to the Paris-based luxury conglomerates LVMH and Kering, you remained proudly independent.
The Armani Hotel in Dubai occupies 11 floors of the Burj Khalifa
You enjoy a joke, too – and when not everybody is in on it, it amuses you even more. When you entertain at your Armani Nobu restaurant in Milan you get the chef to make pasta that looks like sushi because you prefer Italian cuisine to Japanese. You even poke fun at yourself. When I asked you who the love of your life is, you laughed and replied, ‘Tantissimi – so many!’ You old dog!
Mr Armani, you did it your way and introduced me and millions more to la dolce vita. My highlight of your one-man brand? The very late night the two of us spent together at the Vanity Fair Oscars party in Los Angeles in 2007, when you introduced me to all the stars wearing ‘you’ – from Beyoncé to Samuel L Jackson.
Grazie mille. Here’s to many more years.
