Giorgio Armani, the billionaire designer who established one of the world’s most revered fashion labels and helped define the “Made in Italy” slogan as a sign of quality for consumers, has died. He was 91.
He died on Thursday at his home, his company said. He had failed to appear at runway shows in June as he was recovering from an undisclosed illness, the Associated Press reported.
A former medical student, Mr Armani started his namesake brand in 1975 and created a retail empire that few competitors could match. Selling everything from his famous unstructured jacket to jeans and shirts and sunglasses and shoes, Milan-based Giorgio Armani SpA became a cultural phenomenon.
Keeping tight control along the way, Mr Armani fought for decades to keep his company independent amid the mergers and acquisitions that reshaped the luxury sector. Milan-based investment bankers drew up countless scenarios for the company over the years and pitched proposals that never produced any deals.
Mr Armani appeared on Time magazine’s cover in 1982 – “Giorgio’s Gorgeous Style” was the headline – and celebrities such as Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman and Beyoncé Knowles walked the red carpet in Armani clothing at the Academy Awards.
“I believe that my clothes can give people a better image of themselves – that it can increase their feelings of confidence and happiness,” Mr Armani told CNN in 2006.
Through labels such as Armani Exchange and Emporio Armani, the company had revenue of €2.5 billion in 2023, according to its reported results. Mr Armani’s personal net worth was around almost €8 billion as of June 20, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making him one of Italy’s richest people.
Founding the company with partner Sergio Galeotti – who died in 1985, at age 40, after battling leukaemia – Mr Armani helped to popularise looser male suits, instead of boxy and buttoned-up tailoring. That look also attracted female fans, many of whom were pursuing professional careers in the 1980s.
He acquired a global image when actor Richard Gere played a character who wore stylish Armani suits as he seduced women in American Gigolo (1980). The fashion guru nurtured a relationship with Hollywood, designing clothes for more than 100 movies including The Untouchables (1987), Ocean’s 13 (2007) and The Dark Knight (2008).
“I fell in love with the idealised beauty of Hollywood stars,” Mr Armani said in a 2009 interview with Harper’s Bazaar.
Mr Armani was still actively involved in the business in his late 80s and remained its only independent shareholder. In 2016, at 82, he established a foundation in his name to “safeguard the governance of assets of the Armani Group” – an indication of how the company might be run once he was gone.
Nearing his 90th birthday in 2024, Mr Armani acknowledged valuing “independence from large groups” but couldn’t rule out his firm someday combining with a bigger rival or listing on an exchange. He said he hoped to leave his company in the hands of a group of close confidantes. Though he had no children, several relatives serve on the company’s board, and he long suggested that an extended family of advisers would steer the group in the future.
Mr Armani was born into a poor family on July 11, 1934, in Piacenza, in northern Italy. His parents were Maria Raimondi and Ugo Armani. He had a brother, Sergio, and a sister, Rosanna.
“My mother was the main reason I developed an interest in fashion,” he said in a 2006 interview with UK designer Stella McCartney in the Independent. “She always ensured that my brother, sister and myself were immaculately dressed.”
After starting medical school and then going into the army, Mr Armani became a merchandiser at La Rinascente department store in Milan.
He then took a designer job with Nino Cerruti before going freelance for various companies.
On July 24, 1975, he and Galeotti introduced a men’s and women’s ready-to-wear line.
Armani steadily expanded his offering over the years to surf on his high-fashion credentials, adding the lower-priced Emporio Armani, a jeans line, bags, watches, eyewear and perfume – one of which, Acqua di Gio, became one of the most popular male fragrances, commercialised by cosmetics group L’Oreal SA.
He won a lifetime achievement award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America, the Leonardo Award from Italian president Giorgio Napolitano in 2006 and the Legion of Honor from French president Nicolas Sarkozy in 2008. .
Late in life, Mr Armani lamented in a Harper’s Bazaar interview that he had nobody in his life to share his success with and that he had missed out on having fun because of his work commitments. Though he was often seen in his Nobu bar in Milan late at night, he said he had very few friends.
“But having got to where I am now, I cannot allow myself to have doubts,” he said. “What I am doing now is what I wanted to do 20 years ago, so this automatically gives me a certain serenity with the choices that I have made.” – Bloomberg