In March 1990, the fashion trade publication Women’s Wear Daily proclaimed the Oscars to be “The Armani Awards.”
The photograph on its cover was of Michelle Pfeiffer, who was nominated for best actress for her role as a sultry singer in “The Fabulous Baker Boys.”
She wore a black, long-sleeve dress by Giorgio Armani.
When Denzel Washington won an Oscar that year for best supporting actor for his role in the Civil War drama, “Glory,” he wore a classic black tuxedo, also by Armani.
Others in the crowd decked out in the designer’s clothes included Jodie Foster, Julia Roberts and nearly every talent representative from Creative Artists Agency and William Morris.
Before Madonna made Jean Paul Gaultier’s cone bras world famous and before Jennifer Lopez ate the red carpet in her plunging jungle print Versace gown, Giorgio Armani, who died Thursday at 91, blazed a trail as a designer with a worldwide army of celebrity spokespeople.
He conquered Hollywood from Italy with the help of Wanda McDaniel, who came to Los Angeles by way of Missouri and Texas. Together they figured out the right combination of gifted clothes and other acts of persuasion that got a broad spectrum of the buzziest stars, from actors to N.B.A. athletes, to wear Armani and tell the world that was what they were wearing.
“What Mr. Armani was looking for was someone who knew how to tell a story about him in a world he was inspired by, but couldn’t get to,” said Ms. McDaniel, 73. “Understand, he couldn’t speak English and he lived in Milan. So I became his eyes and ears in Hollywood.”
And in the work they did together over the course of 35 years, they fundamentally changed how designers and A-listers collaborated.
Before Mr. Armani and his fashion empire, there was nobody, said Mara Buxbaum, a Hollywood publicist whose clients include Sean Penn, Samuel L. Jackson and Jake Gyllenhaal — Armani lovers all. “This was back in the ’80s,” she said. “They were the ones.”
Ms. McDaniel, a former society editor from the Dallas Times Herald, moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s.
She took a job at the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, became inseparable from Bobby and Maria Shriver and briefly dated Cary Grant. (“She was a babe,” said Lynn Hirschberg, the preternaturally well connected editor at large of W).
Around 1979, she met her husband, the film producer Al Ruddy, whose credits include “The Godfather” and “Million Dollar Baby.” (He died in 2024.)
In 1983, she started a family and left journalism behind.
In 1988, she was hired by Armani to help open the company’s 13,000-square-foot store on Rodeo Drive.
Soon after, Ms. McDaniel organized a lunch for Mr. Armani at Spago. The guest list, she recalled, included Elton John, Sharon Stone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Eric Clapton.
If some of those people did not seem like natural ambassadors for a fashion brand, that was partly the point.
“He was far more interested in the world at large than the bubble of fashion,” Ms. McDaniel said Thursday afternoon, speaking by phone from her home in Los Angeles.
In fact, Ms. McDaniel’s experiences outside fashion were the reason Mr. Armani hired her, she said.
Although Mr. Armani’s clothes had appeared in the 1980 neo-noir film “American Gigolo,” he was having trouble getting connected to a place so far away from where he lived.
Around the time Ms. McDaniel went to work for Mr. Armani, she was introduced to Julia Roberts through Lee Radziwill, the sister of Jacqueline Kennedy.
Mrs. Radziwill was then married to Herbert Ross, who was directing the movie “Steel Magnolias,” and Ms. Roberts had been cast in a leading role.
After its release, Ms. Roberts was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Oscar.
She won the Globe and accepted it wearing a men’s suit she had found with Ms. McDaniel at the Armani store on Rodeo Drive. “I remember, she said ‘I like the fabrics on the men’s floor better,’” Ms. McDaniel recalled. “I said, ‘Julia, you’re going to get me fired if you wear a men’s suit.’”
But when Ms. Roberts did wear it, Ms. McDaniel did not get fired.
Instead, two months later, Ms. McDaniel — who ultimately became an executive vice president at Armani, overseeing entertainment communications worldwide — went to Ms. Pfeiffer’s home in Santa Monica and helped her get ready for the Oscars.
“She was wearing my pearls!” Ms. McDaniel said. “She had my handbag.” (Back then, there were also few brands loaning out seven figure jewelry.)
Working for Mr. Armani was not always easy, she remembered.
He often spoke of himself in the third person, Ms. McDaniel said, adding that he could be a stern “taskmaster.”
Does that mean he yelled at her?
“Don’t all Italians yell?” she said. “Yeah. As needed. And then, five minutes later, he would ask you to come to dinner at his house. If he yelled at you, it was an honor. It meant he was paying attention to you. It meant that you mattered.”
Ms. McDaniel, who retired in 2024, added that Mr. Armani was game not only to outfit actors and directors, but also people in the world of sports.
Enter Pat Riley, the basketball coach with movie-star looks.
In the 1980s, he was coaching the Los Angeles Lakers, where he became known for peacocking down the court in loose, taupe Armani suits.
Ms. McDaniel took him to Milan to his first show.
After that, she said, “he introduced me to Kobe Bryant and we started dressing Kobe for his wedding and the whole shebang.”
Mr. Riley even came to corporate retreats for the Armani staff, where he gave lectures about effective management techniques, Ms. McDaniel said.
They did not do “deals” with celebrities, Ms. McDaniel said. They built “relationships.” To that end, there were, as she put it, “arrangements.”
They included, for example, a multi-year sponsorship of The Sydney Theater Company, whose artistic director, Cate Blanchett, wore Armani on numerous red carpets.
Other relationships began more organically.
The director Martin Scorsese said in an interview Friday that a shared fondness of cinema had been at the root of his friendship with Mr. Armani. “He loved film,” Mr. Scorsese said, recounting how he used to talk with Mr. Armani about old Visconti movies, specifically, “Ossessione.”
He went to Milan numerous times to see the designer. And in 1990 filmed a documentary short about him, “Made in Milan.”
Their relationship included the occasional gift. “He would give me a tie,” Mr. Scorsese recalled. “He would say, ‘Take this you keep it. He loved that deep dark navy blue.” If Mr. Armani was being adventurous, Mr. Scorsese added, “Maybe the tie would have stripes.”
In an interview by phone on Thursday, Glenn Close said that she began wearing Armani sometime around 1985, when she strolled into its Madison Avenue boutique and bought her “first expensive piece of clothing, a fantastic double breasted blazer with these fabulous square eighties shoulders, which I still have.”
After that, Mr. Armani became the first designer to lend her clothes. (He also came to see her in the 2002 revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire” in London. Never mind that he likely couldn’t understand a word of it.)
Ms. McDaniel did broker an introduction to Samuel L. Jackson.
“Wanda was in America, so I met her first,” Mr. Jackson recalled by phone. “She came to New York, where I was doing the movie ‘Shaft.’”
The year was 2000.
Mr. Jackson was playing a debonair detective in a remake of the 1971 film and needed clothes to fit the bill.
“So I flew over to Milan,” he said. “I think it was the first time I flew on a private jet,” he continued, adding quickly that it was also the first time a famous designer made clothes for him.
In short order, Mr. Armani was dressing him for everything.
On the day of Mr. Armani’s death, Mr. Jackson had happened to visit the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to see its current exhibit about Black dandies.
He also happened to be wearing Armani — a navy seersucker outfit.
In fact, Mr. Jackson said, he had just been discussing a plan to go to Milan later this fall for the 50th anniversary of Mr. Armani’s brand.
Now, Mr. Jackson is unsure how the event might go on.
“It’s a real blow,” he said, referring to Mr. Armani’s death.
Jacob Bernstein reports on power and privilege for the Style section.
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