At Armani, the man and the label shine bright

Milan:

On the Sunday morning before the start of Milan Fashion Week, Giorgio Armani sat in the entrance of his Armani coffee house within his three-storey Armani emporium, an Aperol Spritz on the table in front of him. Italians and tourists passing by stopped.

They whipped out smartphones to snap photos of the figure who sat impassively, instantly recognisable from a thousand images: white-haired and permatanned, wearing a tight black T-shirt and black trousers. “Have you seen? It’s Giorgio Armani!” they exclaimed.

Forty years since he started his business, Armani, 81, has his place assured in popular culture. In the past year he has opened an exhibition space, Armani/Silos, curated by him, and published a vast coffee-table book about his life, written by him. His legacy as a fashion revolutionary who in the 1980s gave women freedom in the trouser suit and introduced Hollywood to fashion by putting Richard Gere in his clothes in ‘American Gigolo’ is certain.

At the opening of the Armani/Silos in a former 1950s Nestle granary on Milan’s via Bergognone, movie A-listers of the kind dreamt of by other houses flocked to him in their droves. “He is the only emperor Italian fashion has had,” says Lapo Elkann, Fiat dynasty heir and founder of eyewear brand Italia Independent. “He is also an example to us entrepreneurs, that with very hard work, things do happen.”

“King Giorgio”, as he is known in Italy, has a life story unequalled in fashion. From an upbringing in war-ravaged Italy with his brother Sergio and sister Rosanna, he gave up his medical studies in 1957 and started out as an assistant buyer for La Rinascente department store in Milan, before trying his hand at designing. By 1982, he was on the cover of ‘Time’ magazine.

Today at his emporium in Milan, his branding is on a luxury hotel, restaurant, chocolates and flowers. His business skills show no signs of abating. Revenues rose 16 per cent at Giorgio Armani SpA to €2.5 billion in 2014 as it rolled out more than 200 new stores to bring its total to 2,700, far outflanking Louis Vuitton, Prada and Gucci, which have fewer combined. Operating earnings rose 5.7 per cent to 507 million euros year-on-year.

Armani said its strongest markets were Asia and the Middle East. “You know designers, they are always bickering about who is the best, but none of them ever dared to say they were better than Giorgio Armani,” says Mario Boselli, honorary chairman of Milan’s fashion association Camera della Moda.

Yet in today’s rapidly evolving fashion and luxury industry, Armani’s future is less clear. At a press conference organised by publisher Rizzoli to mark the launch of the book, Suzy Menkes, the fashion critic, noted that Armani’s trademark of consistency is counter-current to the digital age, when many designers are frenziedly pumping out items to feed social media and drive sales.

And where the broader luxury trend is to shun ubiquity and push prices to eye-watering highs, Giorgio Armani SpA, the group, sells across price points: from haute couture line Armani Prive and its two main, ready-to-wear lines Giorgio Armani and Emporio Armani, down to Armani Collezioni, Armani Exchange and Armani Jeans, where it competes more directly with accessible luxury or fast-fashion brand Zara.

But the most persistent question is, after Armani — who still owns the entirety of his business — what happens to Armani? Bankers talk of interest from private equity and Asian and Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds. The Italian state may also consider taking a stake in an effort to keep it Italian, according to some executives.

The question has grown more prescient in light of empire shifts across the industry. This summer, Donna Karan left the design studio she founded in 1984 to focus on her philanthropic causes; Roberto Cavalli flogged the empire he launched in 1970 (or at least 90 per cent of it) earlier this year to Clessidra, an Italian private equity firm, while Diane von Furstenberg, the 68-year-old who has helmed her eponymous label since 1970, told the FT that the appointment of a new chief executive this summer was paving the way for her to take a “step back” from the day-to-day running of the business.

Inevitably, Armani, who still micromanages the business and refuses talk of succession, was asked the question again at his 40th anniversary book launch, where images of his life from blue-eyed baby to white-haired and enviably trim octogenarian cuddling the cats he considers his closest companions flickered across the walls.

“This job is beautiful and I am continuing to do it,” he said in his unmistakable Milanese accent. “My ego tells me to answer that there is no one like Giorgio Armani.”

Comments that bring to mind the words of another king: “Apres moi, le deluge.”

-Financial Times