Among the hundreds of designers whose names populate our wardrobes and imaginations, very few ultimately change how we dress — change the actual shape of things. Most iterate, playing around with what we already know. Their clothes may capture a moment perfectly, even joyfully, but they don’t necessarily alter the permanent vocabulary of fashion.
To do so is what vaults a designer into the pantheon. Most are lucky if they do it once, like Christian Dior with the New Look. Even fewer do it twice, as Coco Chanel did with her cardigan suits and little black dresses, and as Yves Saint Laurent did with his safaris and smoking jackets. Giorgio Armani, who died on Thursday at 91, did it.
He changed the look of the chief executive and the celebrity.
He did it by relaxing the cut of a suit, proving that soft power was not just a term for political strategy, but also a sartorial one, and by coining the word “greige” in 1975 to describe the particular combination of gray and beige that became his signature. And he did it by marrying sparkle to minimalism to redefine the glamour of the star.
It’s hard to overstate the impact of those innovations, especially now that they seem a matter of course. That itself is proof of just how effective they were.
His clothes were both armor and uniform, but they were never aggressive. They derived their strength from a kind of controlled serenity and freedom — control over both image and environment also being a crucial part of the Armani identity and promise. For while Mr. Armani’s designs may have seemed relaxed, they also telegraphed the authority of the decision maker, a reflection of his approach to both his art and his business.
As he said in an email in July, when a final illness meant that he could not travel to Paris to manage his couture show in person: “I oversaw every aspect of the show remotely via video link, from the fittings to the sequence and the makeup. Everything you will see has been done under my direction and carries my approval.”
This almost fanatic single-mindedness created an empire, making Armani a household name, one of the richest men in Italy and a symbol of national success and excellence. It also made him as well as his brand ambassadors of Italian style to the world. And it ultimately trapped him in time and expectations.
It was what led him to mastermind not just stuff to wear but also makeup, fragrance, entire environments. See, for example, the Armani apartment building (interior décor by Armani) atop the Armani store and Armani restaurant that opened on Madison Avenue last October. It is an architectural symphony for living, shopping and dining in cream-colored stone and matching cream-colored slacks and cream-colored pasta.
His ready-to-wear shows were generally held in his own Armani Teatro in Milan, an amphitheater in an enormous Armani complex, which included a gallery that occasionally displayed Armani retrospectives. That complex was distinct from the Armani hotel on via Manzoni, with its Armani cafe and Armani magazine shop, and the Armani palazzo that was the brand’s headquarters. Often, during the catwalk presentations, a section of the audience would regularly applaud in what seemed like calculated spontaneity, as if Mr. Armani had designed not only the looks on the runway but the reaction, too.
Yet when Mr. Armani offered variations on his themes, critics (yes, like this one) sometimes complained that he was repeating himself. When he tried to break out by experimenting with jodhpurs and harem pants, for example, or by introducing bloomers, or by dressing Lady Gaga like a simulacrum of the universe, the results could seem inauthentic and bizarre. It could seem as if he was trying to keep up with trends rather than embrace the idea that he was responsible for a silhouette that transcended them.
He had an unapologetic and often inexplicable affinity for the novelty hat and the very skinny model (at least the very skinny female model), though his dedication to the flat shoe was laudable and proved farsighted. He was never afraid to express his displeasure with those he felt did not appreciate his point of view.
Once, I had to have a conversation with him before a show because he was not happy with a review I had written critiquing his decision to offer trousers with thigh flaps. He was irritated that I hadn’t realized there were plenty of “normal” pants back in his showroom, if that was really what people wanted (the implication being those people, including me, didn’t understand how to move on).
In 2014, he took umbrage when Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, skipped one of his shows, announcing publicly: “She said she was sending her people. But if you go to see your dentist and he puts you in the hands of his assistant, what’s your reaction?” Later he added: “She is influential and powerful. But, perhaps, I’m influential as well.” He was indeed, and they later made up.
Maybe that’s why, though he flirted with acquisition offers, he could never seriously consider ceding control. He remained the sole shareholder of his company throughout his life, but ensured that his name and company would live on in the manner he desired by creating the Giorgio Armani Foundation in 2016 to help steer its evolution, and specifying that there could be no initial public offering or sale until at least five years after his death.
“If I’ve come this far, it’s thanks to the iron focus and obsessive attention with which I manage everything,” he wrote in that July email. It was both a supremely self-aware admission and, it turned out, an epitaph.
It is part of what gave him the imagination and gumption to break two molds, even as he also ended up locking himself into another. And it is part of the reason fashion will most likely be measured in the periods B.A. and A.A.: Before Armani and After Armani.
Vanessa Friedman has been the fashion director and chief fashion critic for The Times since 2014.
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