Fashion innovator and designer Giorgio Armani celebrates 40 years in the business by launching his first autobiography. For those born in the Nineties, it is hard to comprehend what Armani brought to fashion in the past four decades.
Giorgio Armani said: “I started my own revolution. A subtle one but also very strong. I changed the rules of fashion from the previous 20, 30 years.” He added: “I showed that you could wear a flat shoe with evening wear; I added softness to men’s clothes. And I envisaged that women could dress like men but with great femininity.”
His fashion philosophy, his vision of style as a lifestyle, along with his entrepreneurial skills, form the basis of the success of the Giorgio Armani S.p.A. He has received a number of prestigious awards for both cultural and professional reasons. He helped redefine masculine femininity in the Eighties when power suits were a strong staple for the professional woman. In 1980, he designed costumes for the film American Gigolo. The film’s success marked the rise of the Armani style to global stardom that Time magazine featured him on the cover. Since then his company is now worth AED 28 billion.
Suzy Menkes, one of the world’s most influential fashion journalists, presented Giorgio Armani’s Book in Milan. For the launch, the designer was dressed in a simple uniform of cashmere, loose twill cotton trousers in dark navy and white trainers. The large tome is simply entitled Giorgio Armani and published by Rizzoli New York. It highlights young Armani’s idea of being a doctor before his remarkable career and experience in the fashion world and how his company grew, in 1975, from humble beginnings to the vast conglomerate that it is now.
There’s a comprehensive insight into the designer’s lifestyle; Giorgio Armani is set to surprise readers right from the start, with the book’s script that combines public and private, exoticism and rigour, cinema and holidays, childhood memories and the present time, black-and-white and colour – all of it conveyed through evocative storytelling made up of unpublished photos and iconic shots put together in unexpected ways. Since work and life have always been one and the same for him, Giorgio Armani lays bare his private life and describes his own ideas on style and business, seamlessly.
100% of the royalties from the sale of the Giorgio Armani book will be donated to UNICEF.
