Giorgio Armani, the billionaire designer who established one of the world\u2019s most revered fashion labels and helped define the \u201cMade in Italy\u201d slogan as a sign of quality for consumers, has died. He was 91.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Mr Armani appeared on Time magazine\u2019s cover in 1982 \u2013 \u201cGiorgio\u2019s Gorgeous Style\u201d was the headline \u2013 and celebrities such as Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman and Beyonc\u00e9 Knowles walked the red carpet in Armani clothing at the Academy Awards.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe that my clothes can give people a better image of themselves \u2013 that it can increase their feelings of confidence and happiness,\u201d Mr Armani told CNN in 2006.<\/p>\n
Through labels such as Armani Exchange and Emporio Armani, the company had revenue of \u20ac2.5 billion in 2023, according to its reported results. Mr Armani\u2019s personal net worth was around almost \u20ac8 billion as of June 20, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making him one of Italy\u2019s richest people.<\/p>\n
Founding the company with partner Sergio Galeotti \u2013 who died in 1985, at age 40, after battling leukaemia \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 13 (2007) and The Dark Knight (2008).<\/p>\n
\u201cI fell in love with the idealised beauty of Hollywood stars,\u201d Mr Armani said in a 2009 interview with Harper\u2019s Bazaar.<\/p>\n
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 \u201csafeguard the governance of assets of the Armani Group\u201d \u2013 an indication of how the company might be run once he was gone.<\/p>\n
Nearing his 90th birthday in 2024, Mr Armani acknowledged valuing \u201cindependence from large groups\u201d but couldn\u2019t 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\u2019s board, and he long suggested that an extended family of advisers would steer the group in the future.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mother was the main reason I developed an interest in fashion,\u201d he said in a 2006 interview with UK designer Stella McCartney in the Independent. \u201cShe always ensured that my brother, sister and myself were immaculately dressed.\u201d<\/p>\n
After starting medical school and then going into the army, Mr Armani became a merchandiser at La Rinascente department store in Milan.<\/p>\n
He then took a designer job with Nino Cerruti before going freelance for various companies.<\/p>\n
On July 24, 1975, he and Galeotti introduced a men\u2019s and women\u2019s ready-to-wear line. <\/p>\n
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 \u2013 one of which, Acqua di Gio, became one of the most popular male fragrances, commercialised by cosmetics group L\u2019Oreal SA. <\/p>\n
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. .<\/p>\n
Late in life, Mr Armani lamented in a Harper\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut having got to where I am now, I cannot allow myself to have doubts,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat 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.\u201d \u2013 Bloomberg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Giorgio Armani, the billionaire designer who established one of the world\u2019s most revered fashion labels and helped define…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[101,93,61,60,102],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-armani","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-italy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}