Giorgio Armani, the Italian designer who changed the shape of fashion, has died

Giorgio Armani, who designed the aspiration uniform that defined the 1980s and shaped the course of fashion beyond, has died, he was announced today. He was 91 years old on July 11. His death was confirmed by the company.

“With infinite pain, the Armani group announces the death of its creator, founder and tireless: Giorgio Armani,” said a statement. “”He signed ArmaniAs he was always respectfully and admiredly called by employees and collaborators, died peacefully, surrounded by his relatives. Tireless at the end, he worked until his last days, devoting himself to the company, the collections and the many current and future projects. »»

Impossible the most prosperous Italian fashion designer in history, Armani was also his most prosperous entrepreneur. He was the only shareholder in his eponymous company, Giorgio Armani Spa, whose interests extended far beyond the clothes to encompass hotels, household items and even confectionery. The company he started zero in 1975, funded by the sale of his Volkswagen Beetle, saw income of 2.1 billion euros in 2019 and employs around 8,000 people worldwide. His own personal wealth was estimated at $ 11 billion. Remarkably, when he founded his business, Armani was already 40 years old. It would only take seven years to go from the unknown to Time Magazine Cover Star, which represented in 1982 the summit of cultural recognition.

Armani began to design both women’s clothing and men’s clothing as a freelancer in the early 1970s, after a six -year -old passage as a protected of the Nino Cerruti tailor, for whom he worked on a sports clothing label named Hitman. Before that, he spent seven years working in the department store in Milan La Rinascente, where he had served as an assistant window chest of drawers. Armani opened his own design studio with the encouragement of his partner in life and business, the architect Sergio Galeotti. As Armani said Gq In 2015: “Sergio made me believe in me. He made me see the biggest world. ” The two men set up their business – Galeotti was president and co -owner – the assistant next door Irene Pantene (who still works for the company today) and showed their first collection of women’s clothing on the Camera Camera Moda for the fall of 1976, a collection for which they concluded a distribution agreement with Barne.