Giorgio Armani began by placing mannequins in the windows of a Milanese gallery, unaware that one day he would dress Hollywood’s biggest stars. Amid the fabrics, lights, and display windows of the historic La Rinascente department store, he began to forge a career based on the idea of understated, timeless elegance that would take him to the throne of world fashion.
Milan was his eternal muse and international springboard, the city that helped him forge his unique style, his personality, build his fashion empire, and where he experienced key moments in his career.
Armani, who died last Thursday at the age of 91, was born in Piacenza in 1934 to a humble family and moved to Milan in 1949, in the midst of the post-World War II era, when the city was still far from becoming the metropolis it is today. He enrolled in medical school but soon dropped out, and after completing his compulsory military service at a military hospital in Verona, he began working as a window dresser at La Rinascente, a luxury department store located on Milan’s legendary Via Vittorio Emanuele. This was his great window to the world. From that window in the heart of the city, he began to build the esthetic that would transform fashion.
“I didn’t know how to draw, except for the patterns I’d learned in school. I didn’t take any special courses to become a designer. I did have taste, though. And the window display at La Rinascente was an extraordinary school,” Armani himself acknowledged. At the same galleries, he began to rise to photography assistant, in charge of selecting merchandise, and then moved on to the sales department until, in the early 1960s, he landed a job as a designer with stylist Nino Cerruti.
Shortly after, he met Sergio Galeotti, who became his partner in life and work and convinced him to start working on his own, first as a consultant for fashion brands and then to open his own studio in Milan, in 1973. A year later, at the age of 40, he presented his first collection in Florence — at a time when the city hosted big fashion shows — which dazzled the public and critics. The following year, with Galeotti, he opened his first showroom and presented his first menswear collection on the historic Corso Venezia, one of Milan’s most elegant streets. “Sergio Galeotti and I sold our car to cover the costs. He encouraged me to take a risk,” Armani acknowledged. At that moment, he and Milan, in perfect symbiosis, launched themselves into the world of fashion. “Since then, I’ve never thought about leaving this city. I understood that my future, and that of Milan as the capital of style, would be decided here,” the designer said.
In 1976, the Barneys chain in New York acquired his famous unstructured jackets. International success came in 1980 with the film American Gigolo and the wardrobe he designed for Richard Gere. His revolutionary power suits would also go on to dress some of the most iconic male characters in cinema, from Kevin Costner in The Untouchables and The Bodyguard, to Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street, and Brad Pitt in Inglourious Basterds, among others. His style captivated Hollywood, and his brand became synonymous with elegance, luxury, and sophistication.
The designer opened his first stores for his various fashion lines, starting in 1980 in Milan’s Fashion Quadrilateral, bordered by Via Montenapoleone, Via Alessandro Manzoni, Corso Venezia and Via della Spiga, which did not yet exist as we know it today; the epicenter of fashion in Milan, full of the boutiques of the world’s most important brands.
Armani’s historic Via Sant’Andrea store, originally opened in 1983 and now remodeled, remained the epitome of glamour even as other fashion houses began to open luxurious establishments in the surrounding area. Milan is home to the first of the more than 600 stores the Armani empire has around the world. Until the end of his career, it was common for photographs of the designer in his boutiques to be published, in which he appeared personally adjusting the press studs in the window displays, meticulously attentive to detail.
At another of his iconic shops, on Via Manzoni, now a three-story giant expanded to incorporate the Armani Café and the Armani Hotel, visitors left red and white flowers and notes of farewell and gratitude for the late designer. “We’ll probably close on Monday; it’s a day of mourning in the city, we can’t say more,” said a store employee dressed in the classic gray uniform.
While hundreds of citizens bade farewell to the designer on the second day of the memorial at the Armani Theatre, life in central Milan continued as normal, with a swarm of tourists moving around, browsing shop windows, asking for a T-shirt model inside stores, or taking photos with bags adorned with the logos of well-known fashion brands.
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