Why Armani Will Live Forever
Giorgio Armani, founder of his own “proudly independent” multibillion-dollar fashion house, passed away September 4 at the age of 91. Like Ralph Lauren and Coco Chanel, Armani escaped poverty to transcend his humanity, establishing a name forever synonymous with monied aspiration. But Armani is unique. “Chanel” conjures mental imagery of monograms and “Ralph Lauren” a tailored wardrobe. “Armani” invokes an attitude. A look. A world. And perhaps the last of the great fashion designers, whose eternal legacy is guaranteed.
“So much media attention is paid to the big fashion conglomerates, which spend obscene amounts of money on flashy events and over-the-top designs. Mr. Armani is a singular exception,” says Dr. John Potvin, art history professor at Montreal’s Concordia University, author of 2012’s Giorgio Armani: Empire of the Senses, and longtime Armani collector. “His design aesthetic stood for something well beyond fashion. I have rarely felt that the designs he created, whether for the runway or for retail… were produced simply for the sake of consuming.”
As the company itself said when announcing the great man’s passing, “Giorgio Armani is a company with fifty years of history, built with emotion and patience.” This means that the Armani effect can’t be merely summarized with material goods like neckties or handbags. But it also means that it isn't tied to mere objects. Armani is eternal, which you'd know if you studied the holy texts — that is, photographs of Armani’s golden-age collections. This astonishing imagery depicts some of the meanest garments ever slid onto the human form and, more than that, a complete vision of comportment in dress. This is the excellence of Armani, one of the few luxury brands defined by both actual clothes and a point of view.
And in the realm of Armani admiration, there is no holier text than @MyArmaniArchive, the Instagram page run by Dr. Potvin.
“I want to show different aspects of Mr. Armani’s incredible and expansive output, even the lesser-known aspects and the less ‘iconic’ images or pieces,” he says. “There is still much I would like to do, and collect, but it’s a humble start.” For nearly 30,000 followers, Potvin so thoroughly documents all eras of Armani that the house itself is not only aware of his work; Armani appreciates it. Potvin was even invited to Milan to behold the Spring/Summer 2026 runway show in person.
The majority — but, crucially, not the entirety — of Potvin's uploads focus on Armani's efforts from the 1980s up until the mid-’90s or so. Potvin points out that “the brand’s DNA was fully and completely carved out” in this period, where Armani all but single-handedly revolutionized the way that the Western world dressed with sensuous, insouciant tailoring that flowed around the body as though it was poured rather than stitched.
“Armani will always be perfectly encapsulated in those exquisitely produced, magical runway shows and advertising campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s shot by Aldo Fallai and Peter Lindbergh. They possessed both a certain tranquility and a frisson of excitement,” Potvin says. “The clothes were special and yet could easily form the wardrobes of everyday people.”
Armani set the world on fire with full-figured blazers that shifted shape from stern shoulder pads to viscous midsection drapery; full-figured trousers so masterfully proportional that their perfection can only be discerned upon dissection; shirting that evolved beyond shirting into statement pieces, shirt-jackets, and corporeal symbols of Armani’s worldly design cues. These exquisite garments reshaped the wearer, framing their limbs in a powerful, confident silhouette. But more than just great clothes, these were wearable clothes, real clothes.
“I have to underline the fact that no other designer in modern history, apart from Mr Armani, has had an impact on both menswear and womenswear. As founders, both Dior and Chanel could not boast this,” says Potvin. “Mr. Armani redefined the jacket and the suit for men and women. He softened the jacket for men and made it sensuous and sexy. For women, he provided them with a sartorial vocabulary of strength and authority.”
Armani’s designs were widely imitated in the power-suiting ‘80s and slouchy ‘90s, even up through today where a deluge of designers still aspire to the “stealth-wealth” image that Armani long ago perfected. Who needs a logo when a cut is your signature? Who needs to cater to trend when you sell swagger, confidence, conviction?
And yet, Armani is more than clothes. “As with all good design, time, meaning, beauty, function and patience have formed the backbone of [Armani’s] creative output. Integrity, however, is perhaps the most defining quality that underpins the whole global empire he has created,” Potvin says. “From day one, Mr Armani has been a singular visionary. His aesthetic, the brand’s DNA, his business model have evolved, but they have always been clearly defined and articulated and distinct from anyone else.” Armani’s signature clothes established a perspective undergirded by his many sub-labels, his hotels, his spas, his fragrances, his far-reaching creative partnerships. This is the Armani universe, and it's threaded together by one man's perception of elegance. Whereas other luxury labels and conglomerates cobble together their portfolios with graphic motifs or branding that shift with the times, self-made Armani has always offered a feeling.
Long before any modern clothing brand issued lookbook imagery of handsome fellows posted up, hands in pockets, at some scenic locale as a tacit indication of worldliness, long before the words “quiet” and “luxury” were forcibly married to reflect a modern breed of conspicuous consumption, and long before any imprint prided itself for proposing a “lifestyle,” Armani embodied it all. It just so happens that this sprawling kingdom was stubbornly built atop a foundation of honest-to-god luxury clothing.
Beyond the output of the many would-be Armanis designing clothes today, examples of the designer’s lingering influence can be found on the red carpets — Potvin is not alone in attributing the contemporary red-carpet outfit phenomenon to Armani — and in its collaborations with younger makers, where the Armani name is less represented by specific clothes than by that intangible air, that attitude. The agelessness of Armani is epitomized by its own archive, which the luxury label has wisely begun promoting in the vein of Potvin’s Instagram account. This, of course, follows years of vintage Armani collecting among a sect of digital-native menswear types, who’ve been drawn to those eternally debonair Armani campaigns like archeologists to ancient wisdom. We all crave the panache only attainable through that look. The Armani look. And it will not die with its creator.
“I’m not ashamed to say I took the news [of his passing] rather hard. Armani has been a part of my life for nearly 40 years. That is a long time and as a result, he has been present in some fashion or other at all of my life’s big and precious moments, including my wedding,” says Potvin. “His designs compelled me to think big, not to be satisfied with my own humble background and to search for truth and meaning in design. I for one will be forever grateful for the beauty he brought into this world, and into my life.”
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