Armani

Fashion… a fickle word.

Style… something altogether different.

Having just passed the first anniversary of the death of the great
Giorgio Armani,

I find myself thinking about what he created and why it has remained so unmistakably Armani for more than half a century.

I clearly remember the first Armani piece I ever owned.

It was a simple black two-piece suit; I bought it in Rome. It wasn't cheap. Italian cut, beautifully weighted fabric and an extraordinary way of fitting just right. Worn with a fresh, white, British tailored shirt with a cutaway collar. There wasn't very much to it.

And perhaps that was the point.

It wasn't an unusual colour, fashionably detailed or particularly obvious in announcing what it was.

It was simply just right.

I spent much of my youth as a gymnast, training six days a week, which left me with some interesting insights that I regularly reference.
One such insight is that a perfect handstand is surprisingly difficult.

Certainly more difficult than it looks and, in some ways, more demanding than manoeuvres that appear infinitely more spectacular.

There is nowhere to hide. Every line is exposed.

Perhaps the same is true of a black suit.

When you remove decoration, colour and distraction, what remains has to be exceptionally good.

Giorgio Armani understood this better than most.

He built an aesthetic around restraint: softened tailoring, fluid silhouettes and an understated palette of navy, grey, black and neutral tones.

Design with nowhere to hide. An extraordinary achievement within the whirlwind of fashion.

To add to this achievement, something else just as remarkable happened in the house of Armani.

The brand purposefully cascaded demographically: Giorgio Armani sat at the pinnacle.

Emporio Armani reached a broader and younger audience. Armani Exchange went further again, and EA7 took the name into technical sportswear.

Different products. Different prices. Different ages. Different occasions. 

Brand owners spend an enormous amount of time talking about reaching new audiences.

The temptation is invariably to change yourself sufficiently to appeal to them.

Armani seemed to approach the problem differently.

Rather than changing Armani to suit different people, he found different ways for different people to experience Armani.

I encountered an example of this myself.

That first black suit has long since disappeared from my wardrobe -‘waist problem’.

But while browsing online for some new ski clothing, I unexpectedly encountered Armani once again.

There, amongst all the familiar sports brands, was an EA7 ski jacket.

Blue and black, naturally. There were matching black ski trousers.

The price was competitive, so I ordered them.

When they arrived, there it was: the cut, the fit, the restraint, the familiarity.

Undoubtedly Armani.

Decades after buying that black suit in Rome, and in an entirely different product category and sales channel, I recognised and experienced the same aesthetic.

I now enjoy the ski slopes with what I like to think of as a little dose of Armani style — courtesy of the remarkable stretch of Giorgio’s empire.

Some years ago, off Cap Ferrat, I saw ‘Main’, Giorgio Armani's 65-metre personal superyacht, quietly anchored.

I ambled past in my considerably less glamorous boat and found myself studying ‘Main’ quite intensely. 

The Mediterranean is hardly short of spectacular yachts. I have seen extraordinary Philippe Starck creations and enormous floating statements of wealth around Capri, Porto-Vecchio and Costa Smeralda.

But ‘Main’ was different.

It wasn't trying particularly hard to impress.

Dark, restrained, elegant and slightly severe, it somehow looked exactly as I imagined Giorgio Armani's yacht should look.

‘Very Armani’ — a statement in itself.

The same thought occurs when experiencing the Armani Hotel in Dubai's
Burj Khalifa.

This is, after all, one of the most extravagant buildings mankind
has ever constructed: 828 metres of architectural ambition rising out of the desert.

And yet, inside that extraordinary structure, Armani created something restrained.

Muted tones. Clean lines. Carefully considered materials. Space, light and an absence of unnecessary decoration.

Once again, ‘Very Armani’.

What interests me enormously as a branding practitioner is that, usually, the further a brand stretches, the greater the danger that its meaning becomes diluted.

Think for a moment of Porsche. Quintessentially a 911; in all practicality, though, they sell multiples more SUVs, which reside on an Audi platform, than 911s. For me, those SUVs are questionably Porsche, albeit I own one.

So let's take clothing, fragrance, accessories, furniture, interiors, restaurants, hotels, residences, sport and superyachts. Armani managed to stretch without losing himself.

Perhaps the reason is that Giorgio Armani himself appeared to live according to precisely the same aesthetic. Look through photographs of him over the decades, and there he invariably is.

Dark blue T-shirt.

Black or navy trousers.

Occasionally grey.

Occasionally white.

No great theatrical reinvention.

Just Giorgio Armani.

There is something defiant about that consistency in an industry built around change.

It reminds me of an Armani predecessor, Coco Chanel, and her gift to the world,  the little black dress.

It was the confidence to understand that something could become so timeless precisely because it wasn't desperately trying to be fashionable.

My original black Armani suit is long gone. I genuinely miss it; I miss the association.

That quiet feeling that somebody had spent an unreasonable amount of time perfecting something that, at first glance, appeared remarkably simple.

Today, when I pull on my EA7 ski kit, I do recognise a dose of that feeling again.

Different decade, different demographic, very different trousers.

But the same Armani.

Giorgio spent fifty years working in an industry obsessed with what comes next.

His greatest achievement, I believe, is that, from a design perspective, he created something that never particularly needed to ask that question. 

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