The man who made suits feel human
Giorgio Armani didn’t just design clothes. He changed what power looks like. The Italian designer, who died at 91, lifted the padding out of men’s jackets, gave women a new kind of authority in the office, and turned the red carpet into his runway. For decades, his work set the tone for how the world dresses — not louder, but smarter.
Born in Piacenza in 1934, Armani didn’t start in fashion. He studied medicine briefly, served in the military, then learned retail from the ground up at La Rinascente in Milan, working as a window dresser and buyer. The eye he developed there — for texture, proportion, and what people actually want to wear — never left him. He designed for other labels, including Cerruti, before launching Giorgio Armani in 1975 with his partner, Sergio Galeotti. Galeotti’s early death in 1985 could have ended the story. Instead, Armani tightened his grip, expanded, and defined an era.
His idea was simple, radical, and incredibly hard to do well: remove the stiffness. He deconstructed the jacket. He softened the shoulder. He drained the shouty colors and left a palette of stone, sand, and his signature greige. Men looked less armored, more assured. Women walked into offices in trousers and fluid blazers, not borrowing swagger but owning it. The New York Times called him “Fashion’s Master of the Power Suit,” and for once the label fit.
Hollywood amplified that shift. American Gigolo in 1980 did for Armani what Annie Hall did for men’s ties three years earlier: it rewired the screen. Richard Gere’s wardrobe — sleek, neutral, impeccable — made the Armani suit a form of character development. More than 200 wardrobe credits followed. From Jodie Foster to Beyoncé, from award shows to press tours, the industry kept returning to his cut. When Diane Keaton collected Best Actress in 1978 in a double-breasted jacket that felt like a manifesto, it hinted at what was coming: women’s tailoring as a new language.
His clothes often read like sculpture, and museums took notice. The Guggenheim in New York staged a blockbuster Armani exhibition, the first time the institution dedicated a full show to a living fashion designer. Crowds averaged 29,000 people a week. That’s not just fashion traffic; that’s cultural gravity.
His awards cabinet filled accordingly. Vogue called him “the most successful designer of Italian origin” in 2001. Time magazine said he “forever changed the way people think about clothes.” The French state named him an Officer of the Legion of Honour in 2008. Italy made him a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit in 2021. After his death, Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni called him “a symbol of the best of Italy,” and Bernard Arnault praised a “unique style” that pushed Italian elegance worldwide.
An empire built on restraint
Armani didn’t build a brand; he built a universe. He kept the house independent in a consolidation era, resisting the gravitational pull of conglomerates. In 2016 he created the Giorgio Armani Foundation to secure the group’s future and values. The structure was his way of saying the company’s soul should outlast the man. He later streamlined the brand architecture to three pillars — Giorgio Armani, Emporio Armani, and A|X Armani Exchange — to make the message clearer: same codes, different wardrobes.
He never confused quiet with small. The fragrance arm — under a long-running partnership with L’Oréal — turned Acqua di Giò, Code, and Sì into global bestsellers. Armani Privé took his precise minimalism into couture, with gowns that float rather than shout. A|X caught the pulse of the street and the club. He furnished homes through Armani/Casa. He opened hotels in Dubai and Milan, where the rooms feel like stepping into a three-dimensional Armani palette: calm, precise, deliberate.
He also loved sport, and he put his name on performance without sacrificing taste. EA7, the athletic line, dressed Italian athletes at multiple Olympics, including London 2012 and Rio 2016. In Milan, he invested in basketball and became the driving force behind Olimpia Milano, the storied club that wears his initials on its kit. It wasn’t showboating. It was the same idea, moved from catwalk to court: excellence with a straight face.
Armani could be blunt about the industry. He hated waste and disliked the churn of trends. In 2016 he went fur-free. During the pandemic he urged fashion to slow down and to respect seasons and craft again. His factories pivoted to produce protective gowns for Italian hospitals, and the group funded medical efforts. He had the platform and used it, quietly but firmly.
His aesthetic changed red-carpet behavior. Before Armani, the Oscars often read as costume. After Armani, actors arrived dressed as their most distilled selves: black-tie cut on the bone, satin that skims, sparkle used like punctuation rather than paragraphs. That restraint made him a fixture on nominee shortlists and stylist mood boards for decades. The look photographed beautifully and aged even better.
Ask people inside the studios what made his tailoring different, and they’ll talk about ease. The jackets move. The linings breathe. The armhole sits where a body wants it. That engineering gave confidence to people who don’t live on runways: lawyers, architects, news anchors, airline crews, even politicians trying to project calm. His women’s suiting put authority in fluid lines; his men’s suiting removed the body armor without removing the authority.
The business case followed the design case. By keeping control, he could reinvest on his terms. He built one of the world’s largest independent luxury groups, with a store network spanning major capitals and resort hubs. The revenue mix — ready-to-wear, accessories, beauty, home, hospitality — buffered the brand through cycles. When he simplified the label structure, wholesale partners and customers got the message instantly. Three tiers, one DNA.
That DNA is easy to list and hard to fake: neutral tones, masterful drape, gentle shoulder, a preference for whisper over shout. He trusted materials — crepe, silk, a stretch wool with memory — to do the talking. If logo mania was a wave, Armani was bedrock. His pieces work in dim restaurants and fluorescent conference rooms. They read as expensive not because they brag, but because they don’t have to.
Armani’s story is also about partnership. Sergio Galeotti saw the scale of what Armani could be and built the commercial engine behind it. After Galeotti’s death, Armani carried both the sketchbook and the spreadsheet. He was the rare designer-CEO who didn’t burn out or sell out. Around him grew a loyal circle — family and longtime lieutenants who knew the cut as well as the creed. That circle will matter now more than ever.
The tributes landing today have a common thread: permanence. The BBC said he “revolutionised fashion,” adding that no one since Coco Chanel had made such a lasting change in how people dress. Le Monde called him “one of the last great makers of modern fashion.” Those aren’t casual comparisons. Chanel freed women from corsets. Armani freed them — and men — from stiffness.
Walk through any airport and you can still spot his influence. The blazer that behaves like knitwear. The tuxedo that photographs like liquid. The office uniform that doesn’t look like a uniform. Even the current obsession with “quiet luxury” owes him royalties. Long before TikTok discovered stealth wealth, Armani taught customers that confidence can be cut into a jacket.
The brand he leaves behind is built for endurance. The stores are familiar without feeling tired. The ateliers can execute the line with muscle memory. The foundation he created holds the compass: independence, restraint, elegance, function. Expect continuity rather than a hard pivot. The codes are clear enough to teach and deep enough to last.
What made Armani singular is that he didn’t let fashion’s theater get in the way of its job. Clothes should help you face the day. His did, whether that day was a courtroom, a film premiere, a boardroom, or a wedding dance floor. He didn’t chase cool; he defined calm. And calm, it turns out, never goes out of style.
