Giorgio Armani

Italian designer Giorgio Armani was born in 1934 in Piacenza, Italy and worked in a military hospital before moving into the fashion industry. Armani began his fashion career as a window dresser and menswear salesman at Milanese department store La Rinascente before designing his own menswear collections for Cerruti in the mid-1960s. In 1975, Giorgio Armani launched his first collection of men’s clothing under his own name, debuting women’s wear a year later. Armani’s signature tailoring and subtle, neutral palette marked him apart from other designers at the time.

Giorgio Armani started to make a name for himself in America in the 1980s, designing costumes for the film American Gigolo, creating red carpet fashions for stars like Jodie Foster and becoming a go-to designer for 80s professionals, thanks to his “power suit” silhouettes. Giorgio Armani’s global fashion empire today includes men’s and women’s collections, sportswear, eyeglasses and sunglasses, diffusion line A/X Armani Exchange, homewares under Armani Casa, makeup, perfume, watches and an haute couture collection, Armani Privé, launched in 2005. Giorgio Armani also owns restaurants around the world and has an Armani Hotel in Dubai and Milan.