What’s Giorgio Armani’s legacy? He revolutionised menswear and the women’s wardrobe and shaped the tastes of two generations. On the red carpet, he dressed Hollywood’s most famous faces and cemented the link between fashion and cinema in a way few designers had before. Long before it became the standard for luxury fashion houses to brand into lifestyle, Armani was already creating a universe of his own, extending his aesthetic into homeware, hotels and restaurants. And throughout all that, as a business leader, his ability to retain independence for decades is an achievement many of today’s designers aspire to.
Armani held 99.9 per cent of the shares in the company he built, the remaining 0.01 per cent belonging to the Giorgio Armani Foundation, which he created in 2016. In today’s landscape, is replicating Armani’s formula — one that yielded years of success and admiration from the industry — still possible?