The Architect of Timeless Elegance
Sartorially, the look that fueled Armani’s fame was one of relaxed, unstructured tailoring, specifically the jacket. Shortly after establishing his own label in the mid-1970s, he showed a men’s collection featuring a rumpled, unlined jacket that grazed and flattered the body and was a revelation in contrast to the stiff, constructed traditional suits that ruled common menswear. A few months later he reinvented women’s tailoring with a unique masculine allure by eliminating internal supports and padding.
“I hope, sincerely, I do hope that [my jackets] have given them a relaxed feeling of security,” he once told an Italian magazine, according to a Vanity Fair profile from 2000, “and the salutary feeling of being unattackable.” In the 1980s the Armani “power suit” for men and women, with its exaggerated shoulders, widened lapels inspired by the 1940s, and monochromatic silhouette, became the radical signifier of a time of economic prosperity.
