How Giorgio Armani reengineered the suit, and stitched Hollywood into his empire

If Coco Chanel freed women from the restrictive corsets (which was de rigueur in early 20th-century fashion) by designing practical and comfortable garments like loose chemise dresses, wide-leg trousers, and tweed suits, Armani unshackled both men and women from the boardroom straightjacket by using lightweight materials like silk and linen, and introducing a more fluid silhouette. He reengineered the suit, turned red carpets at film festivals and award functions like the Oscars into Armani runways, and stitched his name into the very fabric of modern fashion.

His early design lessons

Born in Piacenza in 1934, Armani grew up during the Fascist era, when austerity was the order of the day. His childhood was punctuated by the sound of air raid sirens and, in one infamous instance, a near-death encounter with an unexploded shell. He wanted to pursue medicine, inspired by reading A.J. Cronin’s The Citadel. For a while, he studied at the University of Milan, before he dropped out and the Italian Army dragged him away to tend to wounds in a Verona military hospital. There, watching soldiers’ broken bodies, he began to understand tailoring: of flesh and of cloth. The bombings he witnessed as a boy ingrained in him a dislike of ostentation. War taught him that excess was fragile and what really lasted was utility. Those lessons translated into his design language decades later, when even the most luxurious garments in his lines retained an aura of restraint.

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He started as a buyer at La Rinascente, a department store (Milan’s version of Bloomingdale’s), where he dressed and arranged mannequins and, in the process, learned how fabrics responded to light. In the early 1960s, he was designing menswear for Nino Cerruti, the haute couture house where he experimented with unstructured tailoring that hinted at the revolution to come. “The charismatic Nino Cerruti was a master of marketing: he once convinced Lancia to paint a fleet of cars in the same shade as his new range of suits, and then enlisted the curvaceous actress Anita Ekberg to break a bottle of champagne over one of them for the cameras. The effectiveness of such publicity coups was not lost on Armani, who would use relationships with celebrities as the cornerstone of his marketing strategy,” writes Paris-based British journalist Mark Tungate in Fashion Brands: Branding Style from Armani to Zara (2012).

Hollywood calling

When Armani and his partner Sergio Galeotti founded Giorgio Armani S.p.A. (acronym of Società per Azioni, the Italian equivalent of a public limited company) in 1975, he was 41, an age when most designers are either peaking or plateauing. Armani, however, was just beginning. This was a time when Italian fashion was dominated by exuberance. Remember Emilio Pucci’s kaleidoscopic prints, Valentino’s multifaceted romanticism, Ottavio Missoni’s zigzags? Armani’s intervention looked ascetic by comparison.

He showed that fashion could be about understated confidence minus aggression, sensuality without exposure. And revised the grammar of modern dress. Armani’s clothes were impressive on their own; the casual, deconstructed look of his suits might seem familiar today, but at the time it was revolutionary. However, it took a movie star to catapult his designs from the fashion pages into the public imagination. That star was Richard Gere, and the vehicle was American Gigolo (1980).

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Designers had dressed celebrities before — Hubert de Givenchy’s work with Audrey Hepburn is legendary — but rarely had a wardrobe played such a central role in defining a character. Gere’s on-screen presence in Armani suits transformed the perception of menswear overnight, sending sales soaring and establishing a blueprint for fashion’s relationship with Hollywood. The scene of the actor as male escort Julian Kay laying out his Armani wardrobe — a parade of ties, shirts, and jackets — on his bed has become one of the most famous fashion moments in film.

New template for elegance

Armani’s partnership with cinema continued in the decades that followed. He designed for over 200 films as well as gowns for actresses from Jodie Foster, Julia Roberts at the Oscars. In Miami Vice, he gave Don Johnson’s Sonny Crockett his pastel nonchalance that made him a fashion icon of the 1980s. In Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables (1987), his tailored suits distinguished Kevin Costner’s disciplined Elliot Ness from Robert De Niro’s flamboyant Al Capone, while Bill Drago’s stark white ensemble stood out in the film’s climactic showdown.

Martin Scorsese became one of Armani’s closest collaborators; we all remember Goodfellas (1990) for just how underworld dons sported suits that underscored power with a hint of menace. Some of Armani’s other films included: Dario Argento’s Phenomena (1985), Paul Schrader’s The Comfort of Strangers (1990), Phil Joanou’s Final Analysis (1992), Walter Hill’s Streets of Fire (1984) and Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium (2013).

Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012) featured Bruce Wayne’s tailored Armani suits. He provided Brad Pitt’s premiere tuxedo in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009). He also dressed Clive Owen in Duplicity (2009), Justin Timberlake in The Social Network (2010), Leonardo DiCaprio and the Wall Street power players in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), and Jessica Chastain in A Most Violent Year (2014). Cinema gave Armani global exposure, and in turn, Armani gave cinema a new template for elegance.

“Cinema allows me to work with clothes in a way that upholds my vision of style; in that I help to build a character. It’s the kind of operation that, when it really works well, rewards you in the most satisfying of ways: eternity. A successful character surpasses the barrier of time, he or she becomes a legendary figure and not just because of the way they act, but because of the way they’re dressed,” Armani wrote in Giorgio Armani: The Book.

The empire of greige

By the 1990s, Armani had expanded far beyond prêt-à-porter (ready-to-wear). He understood that fashion could no longer exist as a rarefied world of ateliers. Like Christian Dior before him, he pursued multiple channels: menswear, womenswear, accessories, perfumes, interiors, hotels. Where Pierre Cardin had dissipated his brand through indiscriminate licensing, Armani built a hierarchy: Giorgio Armani for the core collections, Emporio Armani for a younger clientele, Armani Exchange for mass markets, Armani Privé for couture. Each tier catered to a different audience while reinforcing the central identity.

If Armani Hotels, which opened in Dubai and Milan, translated his visual grammar into architecture, Armani Dolci, Armani Fiori, and Armani Ristoranti extended his name into chocolate, flowers, and dining. He sponsored Olimpia Milano basketball, stamped his logo on perfumes that dominated duty-free shelves, and kept tight control over licensing. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Armani never sold to a conglomerate.

While Versace eventually went to Prada S.p.A. (Capri Holdings, the parent company of Jimmy Choo and Michael Kors sold it for $1.38 billion in April 2025), Valentino to Qatari investors, and Saint Laurent into the portfolio of Kering (which owns Gucci, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, Creed, Maui Jim, and Alexander McQueen), Armani has remained privately held. That independence allowed him to maintain an empire worth billions without sacrificing aesthetic coherence.

Armani’s discipline as a designer was matched by his discipline as a businessman. He was, paradoxically, a moralist. In 2007, he banned underweight models from his runways. He flirted with sustainability, accepted Livia Firth’s “Green Carpet Challenge” (which encourages celebrities to wear eco-friendly vintage) and pushed recycled fabrics on the red carpet.

He also knew the power of sports and dressed Olympic athletes, football teams, even Scuderia Ferrari’s crew. Nothing screams Italian pride louder than Ferrari red lined with Armani stitching. He owned Olimpia Milano, a basketball team, because of course he did. Armani suits travelled as far as Inter Milan’s directors’ boxes, England’s national football team wardrobes, and Chelsea’s lounges. If fashion was war, Armani dressed both the soldiers and the referees.

Maximalist mogul, minimalist monk

Armani was intensely private. He was never the flamboyant, paparazzi-chasing designer. No Lagerfeld cat, no Versace bacchanals. He was reserved, almost monkish. After Galeotti died of AIDS in 1985, Armani never quite recovered. He kept his photograph close, spoke of him often, and admitted Galeotti’s death was the great wound of his life. Armani never married, never strutted his private affairs for tabloids. He preferred yachts to nightclubs, sailing to scandal. The Armani brand was omnipresent, but Giorgio himself was elusive, controlled, exacting, very much like his tailoring.

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Stylish suits were Armani’s signature, the thing people think of first when they hear his name. From his very first collection in 1974, he was a perfectionist, caring about every detail to make clothes that looked sharp but felt natural. His suits always had clean lines, simple colours like grey, beige, and blue, and an elegance that never went out of style. Over the years, his approach stayed the same: suits that were comfortable, moved with the wearer, and made them feel confident. The 2015 summer collection showed this perfectly, with gauzy fabrics, soft textures, and relaxed shapes that kept his timeless style fresh and wearable, proving once again why Armani suits were always iconic.

Of course, he wasn’t perfect. Armani could be infuriatingly sanctimonious about “bad taste.” He dismissed rival designers as circus acts, criticised bright colours, once even scolded women for “overdressing to please men.” But hypocrisy was part of his genius: the man who built billion-dollar stores lectured about simplicity, the man who sold perfumes for teenagers mocked consumer excess. He was both prophet and profiteer. In Armani, you could be rich without looking gaudy, powerful without seeming vain. He dressed not just people but identities. He taught the world that less is more, but also that less could have its own high.

So farewell, Giorgio Armani: Piacenza boy, Milanese titan, Hollywood’s tailor, the monk of minimalism, the last emperor of elegance. Your empire will live on, most importantly, in the confidence of anyone who has ever walked into a room in an Armani suit and thought, without saying it aloud: I own this.