FASHION QUOTE
GIORGIO ARMANI
2022 JANUARY ISSUE
Written by Andrew Sia
Illustrated by Elita Lam
“Jeans represent democracy in fashion”
Courtesy of:
TIME Magazine Cover
on April 5, 1982.
“Tailoring is Far From Dead”
Courtesy of:
GQ gqmiddleeast.com
on January 5, 2022.
Giorgio Armani is known as the most successful designer of Italian origin, and he is accredited with pioneering red-carpet fashion.
He was born July 11, 1934 in the northern town of Piacenza in Italy and he has an older brother and a younger sister. He was aspired to pursuit a career in medicine and enrolled in the Department of Medicine at the University of Milan. But after three years, in 1953 at the age of twenty, he left and joined the army. And because of his medical background, he was assigned to the Military Hospital in Verona. While there he was attending to shows at the Verona Arena.
After he left the army, he took up the job as a window dresser at La Renascente, a department store in Milan in 1957. Later he became a sales person for the menswear department. In the mid-1960s he joined the Nino Cerruti, another Italian businessman whose family is famous for the textile mill for producing the wool fabrics.
It was in the late 1960s, Armani met Sergio Galeotti,, an architectural draftsman and began a personal and professional relationship that led to his opening of a design office in Milan in 1973. Armani started an extensive freelance collaborations with a great number of fashion houses. The experience gave Armani an opportunity to develop his own style. In July 1975 he founded Giorgio Armani S.p.A. in Milan with Galeotti. In that same year in October he presented his first collection of men’s ready-to-wear for Spring/Summer 1976. He also produced a women’s line for the same season.
In 1977, Armani entered into the womenswear market using the cutting of the menswear, and it was well received by the career women in the U.S. market.
The following years we found Armani designed the costumes for American Gigolo in 1980 and the success led to a long-term collaboration with the film industry. Armani continued to design costumes for more than one hundred films, one of the most famous was the Untouchables in 1987. He was using the films to reach to the U.S. audiences and also gained the recognition from the fashion world.
In 1982, Giorgio Armani appeared as the cover of the Times magazine, it was after Dior, to be the second person in the fashion industry who was used as the cover.
In 1981, he started the cheaper brand for the younger market under the label of Emporio Armani and also the jeans line known as the Armani Jeans.
As of 2009, Armani has a retail network of 60 Giorgio Armani boutiques, 11 Collezioni, 122 Emporio Armani, 94 A/X Armani Exchange, 1 Giorgio Armani Accessori, and 13 Amani Junior stores spread over 37 different countries. The company has the annual turnover of $1.6 billion.
Armani started with the “Soft Suits” and together with Gianfranco Ferre, and Gianni Versace, they are known as the Milan 3G.
Giorgio Armani received the CFDA International Award in 1983. And for the honors, he received: Officer of the Order of the Legion of Honor of the French Republic in 2008; Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 2021.
