Kathleen Sorbara was on her way to the airport on Thursday morning when she suddenly received a barrage of text messages. The fashion designer Giorgio Armani, whose labels can reliably be found on the racks at her namesake vintage store, Sorbara’s, had died at the age of 91. “The store group chat was like, ‘Oh my god, Armani’s dead,’” she said. “I was so sad.”
Ms. Sorbara, 30, is one of many young collectors who became interested in Mr. Armani long after his heyday in the 1980s and 1990s, contributing to a recent Armani-aissance fueled by nostalgia, social media and TikTok trends like “quiet luxury.” They are of a generation whose parents wore Armani clothes; maybe they had a bottle of Acqua di Giò in their high school locker. In the last decade, though, they’ve been able to invest in their own Armani pieces on resale sites like eBay and the RealReal. It’s a testament to the designer’s timeless designs, which still feel modern today.
According to eBay’s trend report from May, Armani was the most-bought luxury brand in the United Kingdom and Italy. By midafternoon on Thursday, as tributes from dedicated Armani archive accounts and celebrities like Martha Stewart flooded Instagram, searches for “Armani” on the RealReal increased by 212 percent compared with the day before, according to a representative from the company. On Depop, the increase was 288 percent.
Long-Lasting Appeal
Ms. Sorbara was around 19 and working as a fashion model in New York when she first started collecting vintage Armani. She was drawn to the gender fluidity and understated sex appeal of his pieces. Thanks to their long-lasting quality, she was able to build a simple, elegant and affordable capsule wardrobe of V-neck sweaters and pleated trousers. When she eventually opened her first vintage store in Williamsburg, Chickee’s, in 2019, she stocked so much of the designer’s work that customers would walk in and joke: “Did you buy out an old Armani store?”
From Emporio Armani to Armani Exchange, the high volume of products that Mr. Armani produced during his lifetime makes his work more accessible today — and thrilling to hunt for. But the holy grails may cost you.
“It’s getting really pricey and increasingly hard to get because of the demand,” said Louis Proteau, 31, owner of 24Process, a vintage store in Paris. Shoppers his age and younger — mostly men, but some women — will often come into the shop looking for rare vintage Armani, either for themselves or because they are stylists and designers seeking references. He declined to share specific numbers but said some Armani pieces had reached several thousand euros in price.
“We all finally understood that he was the original,” Mr. Proteau explained, referring specifically to Armani’s signature oversize silhouette, which has recently come back into fashion.
After seeing a double-breasted Armani blazer with a shawl collar from the ’80s at Ebreo, a vintage store in Brooklyn, the designer Nick Williams, 34, went hunting for something similar on eBay. What he found inspired the relaxed Sumi-dyed canvas suit in his spring-summer 2025 Small Talk Studio collection, which he has worn to both weddings and to work in the garment district. More than anyone, Mr. Armani “bridged the gap between formal wear and sportswear in a way that I think a lot of men’s designers are trying to emulate these days,” Mr. Williams said.
For the 2025 Golden Globes, the actress Ayo Edebiri was styled by Danielle Goldberg in a custom suit with a wide lapel and exaggerated shoulders. According to a post in Ms. Edebiri’s Instagram Stories, her look was partly inspired by the gray men’s Armani suit Julia Roberts had worn to the ceremony in 1990, five years before Ms. Edebiri was born.
“What he did over the course of his life is being referenced over and over and over again,” Ms. Sorbara said of Mr. Armani. “My job is to give people that reference. Like, you don’t have to shop Lemaire; you can just buy the real thing.”
Well, that is, if someone else is willing to give it up. After receiving numerous direct messages about a military-inspired jacket from an Armani men’s collection in the early ’80s, Mr. Proteau decided he wasn’t ready to part with it just yet. “I doubt I’ll ever find another one like it,” he said.
From a Hard Sell to High Demand
On Thursday evening, Ms. Sorbara happened to host a book event with Gene Pressman, a third-generation member of the Barneys New York family, whose father, Fred, is credited with introducing Armani to the American market. “When we brought Armani to this country, for a few years, it was a very hard sell,” Mr. Pressman said, joking at one point that he sounded like an elder.
In the crowd was Jalil Johnson, 26, who wore a vintage suede Armani jacket — a “shacket,” as he called it — that he’d purchased on eBay for around $100. He also carried a Bottega Veneta clutch bag reminiscent of Lauren Hutton’s from “American Gigolo,” a 1980 film starring Richard Gere that Mr. Armani famously designed the costumes for.
“I screamed this morning when I saw the news,” Mr. Johnson said, adding that his first thought was, “everything’s going to go up in price now.’”
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