The hallmark of Giorgio Armani is control. At 91, he remains not only creative director but also CEO and sole shareholder of the company he founded 50 years ago. I would say fashion company, but Armani today is much more than that. Yes it makes clothes – lots of clothes, from handcrafted, haute couture Academy Awards gowns (Armani Privé) through to trademark relaxed suiting (Giorgio and, for the less affluent, Emporio) down to jeans and T-shirts for the ragazzi. There’s also the beauty, the homewares and hotels, the chocolates and restaurants, even a floristry subdivision called Armani/Fiori, where nature itself is bent to Mr Armani’s exacting creative demands in abstracted and – yes – supremely controlled ikebana-style arrangements. He also sells the vases.
Armani with Jodie Foster before he received the inaugural award for the Rodeo Drive Walk of Style in Los Angeles, 2003 © Emanuele Scorceletti
“My greatest weakness is that I am in control of everything,” says Giorgio Armani. He recently showed a rare chink in that armour: he was absent from the three fashion shows he staged in June and July due to illness. He is still rehabilitating at home, ahead of the planned 50th-anniversary celebrations that will take place at Milan fashion week in late September and where he will unveil an exhibition at the Pinacoteca di Brera – the first at this august museum to be dedicated to fashion. It’s in a convenient location: overlooking Armani’s apartment in the centre of Milan.
