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Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani, who passed away on Thursday (September 4) at the age of 91, has left behind a body of work that has reshaped the face of global style.
Armani redefined tailoring and made luxury accessible, and his influence is seen as much on red carpets as in boardrooms and everyday wardrobes.
This is the story of Armani and his permanent imprint, compacted in seven points, including his connection with India.
1. A late start and a swift rise
Born in Piacenza, Italy, in 1934, Armani was relatively late to enter the fashion industry. It was only in 1975, when he was already 41, that he started his own label, with his late partner Sergio Galeotti.
However, recognition arrived quickly. Within a decade, he had become synonymous with an exciting sleek and minimalist style. As he built an empire that spanned haute couture, fragrances, furniture, and even hotels, he came to be referred to grandiloquently as the “king of fashion”.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Armani retained full control over his company, remaining the sole shareholder, and later setting up the Giorgio Armani Foundation to secure its vision for the future.
The “deconstructed” suit revolutionised menswear. Armani softened the stiff, padded, and sharp tailoring of men’s business attire by removing the heavy structure and introducing fluid silhouettes that introduced ease in authority.
The new look, embodied by Richard Gere in American Gigolo and Don Johnson in Miami Vice, would soon become the global template for modern masculinity. Armani’s suits allowed men to look powerful without appearing rigid and stiff, and changed the image of the male professional.
3. Women’s fashion: Power with poise
Armani’s contribution to women’s fashion was equally transformative.
In the 1980s, as more women entered corporate workplaces, Armani introduced the power suit that combined strength with elegance. He moved away from the exaggerated shoulder pads that dominated the decade, and adopted a softer and more wearable style that would have women project authority without compromising on grace.
Armani gave women a language of confidence and sophistication in both the professional and social spheres. His red-carpet gowns became the preferred choice of stars like Cate Blanchett and Renee Zellweger, who favoured his minimalist approach over glittering excess.
While many luxury designers remained inaccessible to the wider public, Armani actively broadened his reach to everyday consumers across continents.
With the launch of Emporio Armani and Armani Exchange, his aesthetic became available to younger buyers who did not necessarily belong to the elite sections of society.
His fragrances, especially Acqua di Gio, became global bestsellers by becoming an entry point for millions who wanted to experience the Armani ideal of understated elegance.
5. Quiet luxury and ethical fashion
Armani’s ability to pair timelessness with innovation made him the global icon of “quiet luxury”, which rejected loud logos and fleeting trends in favour of subtle elegance.
His retrospective at New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 2000 marked a rare moment when fashion entered the world of fine art. In 2007, he became one of the first to livestream couture shows on the Internet, signalling his early willingness to embrace digital shifts that were changing the world.
Armani also subscribed to ethical positions that led him to ban dangerously underweight models from his runways and to launch the ‘Acqua for Life’ project to support clean water initiatives.
India figured in Armani’s journey. His 1994 visit to the country left a lasting impression which inspired a capsule collection in 2019 that borrowed from the traditional achkan and fused it with Italian minimalism.
Armani’s flagship stores in Delhi and Mumbai were launched in 2008, giving affluent Indians access to his signature style, and Armani cafes added a lifestyle dimension to his brand presence.
His restrained aesthetic offered a striking alternative in a country dominated by maximalist design traditions, for those seeking a quieter and more international form of elegance.
7. Armani contd.: A legacy beyond fashion
Armani leaves behind his imprint almost everywhere. He revolutionised the fashion industry, changing how men and women dressed for work, celebrities approached the red carpet, and ordinary people had their encounters with luxury.
Armani’s fashion was aspirational and democratic, glamorous and ethical. His designs showed elegance lay in simplicity, and his business model demonstrated that independence remained possible in an industry that was dominated by conglomerates.
Armani created not just clothes but a cultural vocabulary of elegance that travelled beyond class, geography, and gender. His legacy endures in the relaxed suits and minimalist gowns that men and women wear, and in the fragrances that young consumers buy around the world.
