Giorgio Armani, the Milanese designer who tore the stuffing out of suits and defined power dressing during the 1980s, died yesterday in Milan at the age of 91. As one of the last Italian modernists, he distilled men’s style into essential elements—silhouette, drape, and proportion—to create what he described as “soulful, sophisticated simplicity.”
Armani was known for his slouchy, generously cut clothes rendered in colors that suggested spareness and luxury, such as black, stone, and greige. But behind the tranquility of his designs was a life marked by trauma and obsession. In a 2004 documentary about the designer, Anna Wintour suggested that no major decision was ever made without Armani’s approval. The truth was starker: no decision, no matter how minor, passed without his input. Armani chose the cast-iron lanterns that flanked his headquarters, the exact hue and shade of his store displays, and the weight of the stationary used at his branch offices. Even when he contracted bronchitis at the age of 91 and was advised by a doctor to not travel, he oversaw the fittings, make-up, and sequencing for his fall 2025 Armani Privé show via a remote video link. “Everything you will see has been done under my direction and carries my approval,” he emailed attendees. To borrow a Biblical line, no sparrow fell in Armani’s world without his permission.
Armani studied medicine in college and completed a stint in the Army before realizing he didn’t have the temperament for a medical career. He soon found himself on a meandering path that led him to La Rinascente, a Milanese department store, where he began at the bottom as a window dresser. From there, he quickly rose through the ranks—first as a sales clerk, then as a buyer’s assistant—which put him in front of Nino Cerruti, then-head of one of Beilla’s most esteemed textile mills. Impressed by Armani’s eye for design, Cerruti hired Armani to lead his new menswear brand, Hitman, in 1964. Armani worked for Cerruti for six years, after which he freelanced for other firms while refining his vision. Then, in 1974, he launched his eponymous label with funds he raised from the sale of his blue Volkswagen Beetle. The firm started with just two people: a young assistant named Irene Patone, and a charming Tuscan architectural draftsman named Sergio Galeotti, who Armani met near a Capannina nightclub in Versilia.
The company went from making $14,000 in sales its first year to doing $100 million a decade later. Their nearly overnight success is often chalked up to Armani’s romantic silhouettes offered in mud bank colors, which telegraphed masculine sophistication and ease. Or the way the clothes were picked up by newly minted financiers in the 1980s, creating what’s known as the “power suit.” But the formula to Armani’s success was a little more complicated.
