Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani has died on the age of 91, the Armani Group introduced on Thursday.
The designer is credited over his many years of follow with curating a quintessentially Italian aesthetic in his garments, in addition to taking Hollywood’s crimson carpets to new heights.
“Il Signor Armani, as he was always respectfully and admiringly called by employees and collaborators, passed away peacefully, surrounded by his loved ones,” the Armani Group mentioned in an announcement, describing the founder as “a tireless driving force.”
“In this company, we have always felt like part of a family,” learn an announcement supplied by the model on behalf of his household and workers. “Today, with deep emotion, we feel the void left by the one who founded and nurtured this family with vision, passion, and dedication. But it is precisely in his spirit that we, the employees and the family members who have always worked alongside Mr. Armani, commit to protecting what he built and to carrying his company forward in his memory, with respect, responsibility, and love.”
In June 2025, Armani was not current to take his ordinary bow on the model’s present throughout Milan’s Men’s Fashion Week, marking the primary time in his profession he had missed his personal runway occasion. At the time, the corporate launched an announcement that he was “currently recovering at home” with out specifying his well being situation.
In the present luxurious panorama, which is dominated by conglomerates resembling Louis Vuitton proprietor LVMH and Gucci dad or mum firm Kering, Armani was one of many few designers to stay the only real shareholder of his firm. As of but, there isn’t a apparent inheritor to the Armani enterprise, which in 2024 was valued by analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence between 8 to 10 billion euros ($9.3 billion to $11.7 billion).
A string of celebrations for Armani’s fiftieth yr in enterprise have been deliberate to happen throughout Milan Fashion Week this month, together with the disclosing of an exhibition on the Pinacoteca di Brera — the primary on the museum to be devoted to fashion — and a runway present at Palazzo Brera.
In August, Armani was featured in a cover story by the Financial Times’ complement HTSI, the place he mentioned his continued dedication to the fashion business, and his firm, the place he nonetheless oversees all artistic path. “I don’t know if I’d use the word workaholic, but hard work is certainly essential to success,” he mentioned. “My only regret in life was spending too many hours working and not enough time with friends and family.”
Born in 1934, within the northern Italian city of Piacenza, Armani didn’t present knowledgeable curiosity in fashion till 1957, after learning drugs after which a stint within the army, he received a job as a window dresser on the historic La Rinascente division retailer in Milan — a transfer that may start his lifelong affiliation with Italy’s fashion capital.
In 1964, designer Nino Cerruti took an opportunity on Armani, who was by then a purchaser at La Rinascente, by giving him a job designing menswear. It was right here that he first realized about unstructured jackets — swimsuit jackets with the standard lining and stiff padding eliminated to intensify the wearer’s physique — which he would later good and turn into well-known for.
While working for Cerruti, Armani met Sergio Galeotti, an architect who would turn into his life and enterprise companion. Galeotti persuaded Armani to arrange his personal enterprise, and the 2 later based the model Giorgio Armani in 1975.
Their first menswear assortment discovered success within the US: It was stocked at Barney’s New York in 1976, and the division retailer even produced a TV business introducing Armani to American customers (Barneys shut down in February 2020 after submitting for chapter). It was quickly adopted by a womenswear assortment, which noticed the model debuting an androgynous look. (“I was the first to soften the image of men, and harden the image of women,” Armani later mentioned.)
His jackets earned the eye of Hollywood. In 1980, Richard Gere famously wore an Armani swimsuit in “American Gigolo,” turning it into a standing image. Soon, dressing stars for the crimson carpet turned one other type of promoting for the model. Many of the largest celebrities of the day — Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sophia Loren, Jodie Foster, Sean Connery and Tina Turner, amongst others — have been all pictured carrying its creations. This led to a fierce competitors with the opposite huge title of Nineteen Eighties Italian fashion, Gianni Versace, whose dazzling type stood in stark distinction to Armani’s usually understated appears.
In 1985, Galeotti died from AIDS, leaving Armani as the corporate’s sole shareholder. Of his relationship with Galeotti, Armani instructed Vanity Fair in 2000: “Love is too reductive a term. It was a great complicity vis-à-vis life and the rest of the world.”
Over the years, Armani launched a well-liked diffusion line, Emporio Armani, in addition to different profitable spin-offs resembling Armani Jeans, Armani Exchange and the house interiors model Armani/Casa. In 2011, he opened an enormous Armani advanced occupying a whole block in downtown Milan. As properly as providing merchandise from numerous Armani ranges, together with candies, flowers, jewellery and cosmetics, it additionally serves as a nightclub and luxurious lodge. (This adopted the opening of the Armani Hotel Dubai a yr earlier on this planet’s tallest constructing, the Burj Khalifa.)
A longtime sports activities fan, Armani purchased Olimpia Milano, Italy’s most profitable basketball group, in 2008. He then launched EA7, a sports activities attire vary impressed by the jersey variety of Ukrainian soccer participant Andriy Shevchenko, as soon as a striker for AC Milan. Borrowing from that vary’s aesthetic, he went on to design the Italian group’s uniforms for the London 2012, Rio de Janeiro 2016 and Tokyo 2020 Olympic video games.
Armani’s affect in fashion additionally extends to the current day: the timelessness and precision of his tailoring has led to a burgeoning secondhand marketplace for classic Armani designs. His pantsuits, which supplied girls a strong and complex different within the office and past, proceed to be favored by stars, together with Cate Blanchett who opted for a silk, two-piece swimsuit by the label as she attended Wimbledon in 2025.
Armani’s many accolades embody being named a Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 2021, one of many nation’s highest honors, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America. He was appointed as a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN’s refugee company, UNHCR, in 2002.