Giorgio Armani, whose streamlined fashions ruled the red carpet, dies at 91

Five years after the launch of his luxury fashion house, Giorgio Armani secured his place in fashion history when he created the scene-stealing wardrobe for actor Richard Gere in American Gigolo.

The 1980 film – with Gere as a bare-chested ladies’ man pawing his collection of Armani suits, shirts and ties – forged a vivid link between clothes and seduction, and forever made the designer’s relaxed style of tailored dressing part of the fashion vernacular.

His signature wide-shouldered, double-breasted, broad-lapeled blazers came to embody success, sophistication and self-assurance – and became the uniform of the power crowd from Hollywood to Wall St to Fleet St in London. His made-to-measure suits and couture gowns were a staple at premieres and awards shows, so much so that Women’s Wear Daily dubbed Oscar night “the Armani Awards”.

Armani, who has died at 91, was the president, chief executive and sole shareholder of his self-titled company. He was one of the highest-earning fashion designers in the world, with a net worth estimated at US$12.1 billion, according to Forbes magazine. He had not designated a successor, but the Financial Times reported last week that he expected to oversee a “gradual transition” in which responsibilities were handed over to family members and longtime collaborators such as Leo Dell’Orco, the company’s head of men’s design.

Across a half-century career, Armani brought elegance and refinement to the art of the power suit and revolutionised the way modern men and women dress. He reinterpreted and softened men’s clothes – notably the classic American business suit – and pushed the boundaries of women’s fashion, projecting an understated confidence perfectly fitted to a new generation of women intent on climbing the corporate ladder or entering politics.

A dresser, a buyer - then a designer

The steel-blue-eyed, perpetually bronzed Italian designer debuted his first collection at age 40 in 1975. Armani, a former window dresser and menswear buyer, felt that the bulky, trendy suits of the era failed to properly complement and flatter men’s bodies. He also believed their uniformity stifled the customer’s personality and individuality.

“When I began to design, men all dressed in the same way. American industry called the shots, with its technicians scattered all over the world … all impeccably equal, equally impeccable. The Mao syndrome,” Armani once said. “You couldn’t tell them apart. They had no defects. But I liked defect. I wanted to personalise the jacket.”

Celebrities such as John Travolta, Warren Beatty and Mick Jagger were early converts. Affluent, style-conscious stockbrokers and executives followed suit – literally. And when women started to covet Armani’s designs, he reinterpreted his menswear classics in women’s sizes.

“An Armani suit steeled the nerve of women without masculinising them, just as it disarmed men erotically without unmanning them,” New Yorker culture and fashion writer Judith Thurman observed in 2000.

Armani was widely credited as one of the first designers to recognise and harness the value of the red carpet in popularising his brand. He offered his services and demure, figure-flattering designs to rising starlets who were worried about making a fashion faux pas in the spotlight of a million paparazzi flashes.

Fittingly, fashion arbiter and actress Diane Keaton was the first to wear his tailored design – a deconstructed beige blazer – on the red carpet in 1978. In 1988, Armani opened a 1207sq m (13,000sq foot) boutique in Beverly Hills to cater to his celebrity fan base and hired a former society columnist as the company’s publicist.

Celebrities – including actor Jack Nicholson, director Martin Scorsese and pop star Beyoncé – flocked to Armani’s flagship store to be outfitted in his tuxedos or gowns for star-studded events. The designer also courted influential public figures, such as NBA coach Pat Riley, whose collection of custom-made Armani suits earned him the nickname “GQ” and gave the label plenty of prime-time exposure.

Over time, Armani grew the company into a lifestyle empire, expanding his label to include jewellery, accessories, housewares, hotels, restaurants, chocolates, perfumes, florists and even yachts. He also created several sub-labels – offering haute couture, denim, children’s wear and activewear – and owned hundreds of stores worldwide.

Creating styles that endure

Giorgio Armani was born on July 11, 1934, in Piacenza, Italy, an industrial town southeast of Milan. His father was an accountant for a transport company, and he said his mother’s sense of style – “rejecting artificiality, ostentation and caricatures” – influenced his taste.

Armani enrolled at the University of Milan’s medical school, at his parents’ behest, but dropped out to enlist in the Italian army as a medical assistant.

At La Rinascente, Armani’s ambitious window displays flopped and he was transferred to the fashion and style department, where he worked his way up from an assistant menswear buyer to fashion coordinator. The switch turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

“I began to understand about fabrics and the importance of rapport with the public,” he told Time magazine. “It’s one thing to design clothes, but it’s something else again to hang around the salesrooms watching the public react to them.”

Armani left La Rinascente in 1964 and later worked as a freelance designer before his companion and later business partner, Sergio Galeotti, convinced him to strike out on his own.

They established the fashion house with US$10,000, the profits reportedly garnered from the sale of all of Armani’s possessions, including his beloved Volkswagen Beetle. Galeotti managed the business and mechanics while Armani served as creative head.

“At the time, he was completely radical,” British designer Paul Smith told W Magazine decades later. “Soft tailoring. Rounded shoulders. No front crease in the pants. He used incredible fabrics, like textured crepes, and completely new detailing.”

Barneys New York began exclusively selling Armani’s wares in 1976 and two years later, he signed an exclusive licensing deal with one of the world’s biggest fashion conglomerates, GFT. In 1982, he made the cover of Time, which noted that his “clothes show wit instead of frivolity, refinement of detail instead of great experimental expanses”.

In 1985, just as Armani’s company was experiencing explosive growth, Galeotti died at age 40 of complications from Aids. It was a devastating loss for the company and for Armani personally, but he continued to approach business with a steely determination.

Colleagues often described him as a workaholic and a micromanager. He proved just as regimented in his personal life – he was a vegetarian, nonsmoker and nondrinker.

“I’m introverted and reserved: I have always preferred my studio to parties and social events,” he told the Telegraph in 2015. “Even today, I’m still the first to arrive at work in the morning and the last one to leave at night.”

In 1996, Armani agreed to a plea-bargain settlement in connection with charges that he had bribed Italian tax inspectors in exchange for lenient audits. He said that the settlement, which included a nine-month suspended jail sentence and US$64,000 fine, was not an admission of wrongdoing, but was instead an effort to “close a chapter that has upset my professional serenity”.

Armani’s death was announced on Thursday (local time) in a statement by his company, which did not say when he died. Additional information, including on survivors, was not immediately available. His younger sister, Rosanna Armani, is a former model, actress and Armani employee.

In balancing glamour and restraint, Armani’s fashions were widely considered timeless in an industry often subject to hype and short-lived trends. “Elegance,” he once said, “doesn’t mean being noticed. It means being remembered.”