You know, usually when we sit down to do one
of these deep dives, we're looking at something.
Well, something with defined edges. A company,
a new technology, maybe a single historical event.
Right. Something you can sort of put a box around.
Exactly. But today, today feels different. I
was watching the footage from Milan this past
week and it was just... Yeah. You have a EuroLeague
basketball game, which is normally the loudest,
most intense place on the planet. And the whole
arena just goes completely silent. A moment of
silence. Yeah. And then you see these shops in
the Quadrilateral de la Moda. I mean, these are
stores that probably lose thousands of euros
an hour if they're not open. And they're just
pulling down their shutters in the middle of
the afternoon. It felt like the city itself was
in mourning, not just the industry, but the city.
It really did. It felt less like a famous CEO
passed away and more like. I don't know, a head
of state or a king. Well, in Milan, he kind of
was. The line gets pretty blurry, but you're
right to feel that gravity. We are, of course,
talking about the passing of Giorgio Armani on
September 4th, 2025. He was 91 years old. And
that's really the hook for us today. We're not
just here to read an obituary. We have a stack
of sources in front of us that is, frankly, a
little intimidating. It's a big one. We've got
the official financial reports from Giorgio Armani
S .P .A. We have biographical records that go
all the way back to the 1930s. We have these
incredibly dense articles on textile manufacturing
agreements from the 70s. Stuff that sounds boring
but is actually where the whole story is. Right.
And on top of all that, we have the details of
his will, which we absolutely have to get into
later because it is a bombshell. Oh, the will
is the twist ending. It changes how you look
at the last 40 years of his entire strategy.
But the central question I really want to tackle
today is, I think, a simple one on the surface.
How does a young man who drops out of medical
school, a kid who grew up in a war -torn town
literally dodging unexploded bombs, How does
that person end up with a net worth of $12 .1
billion and, more importantly, fundamentally
change the way our entire species puts clothes
on for half a century? It's a massive question.
And I think to even start to answer it, you have
to sort of forget the fashion part for a minute.
Forget fashion? That sounds counterintuitive
for a deep dive on a fashion designer. Just for
a moment. Because when you dig into these sources,
you realize Armani wasn't just an artist. I mean,
yes, of course he was a brilliant artist, but
that isn't why he won. It's not why he outlasted
everyone. So why did he? He was an engineer,
he was a psychologist, and above all else, he
was a ruthless, calculating businessman. An engineer
of fabric. Exactly. And an engineer of his own
empire. He built it brick by brick with a blueprint
nobody else could see. Well, then let's get into
that blueprint. We have to start at the beginning.
Piacenza, Italy, July 11th, 1934. Right. And
you have to really set the scene here. This is
not the Italy you see in postcards. This isn't
Fellini's La Dolce Vita with Vespas in July.
No, this is Mussolini's Italy. It's pre -war
tension sliding into absolute mid -war devastation
and poverty. His family was not wealthy. They
were just trying to get by. And I was reading
through their early biography, and there's this
incredible contrast that just keeps jumping out
at me. We think of Armani, the brand, as the
king of griege. Ultimate minimalist, beige, gray,
calm, controlled. Zen. Everything is soft. Everything
is quiet. But his childhood was the exact opposite.
It was loud. It was violent. Incredibly so. Piacenza
was a strategic target for the Allies. It was
a transportation hub in the north, so it was
bombed heavily. And the sources point to one
specific incident. one childhood trauma that
I think explains almost everything that comes
later. The incident with the gunpowder. The unexploded
artillery shell. So Armani is just a kid, maybe
seven or eight years old. He's out playing with
friends in a field or a ditch. Which was just
a terrifyingly common landscape for kids back
then. The whole country was littered with the
debris of war. It was their playground. So they
find this shell that hadn't detonated. And to
them, it's a curiosity. It's a toy. They start,
you know, poking at it, messing with it. Oh,
no. And the sources say the fuse triggered. It
exploded. It killed one of his friends instantly
right there in front of him. And Giordio, he
was engulfed in the blast. He was burned severely
all over his body. He ends up in a hospital for
weeks, right? Just wrapped in gauze. For weeks.
He described the smell of rubbing alcohol in
his own burnt skin. And I want you to just pause
on the psychology of that for a second. It's
horrifying. You're a child. The world outside
is literally exploding around you. Your friend
has just been killed. And now you are trapped,
immobile, in a hospital bed. hovering between
life and death yourself. Is that where the famous
control freak nature comes from? Because you
read these stories later in his life about him
personally checking every single light bulb in
a new store or rearranging the flowers on a table
right before a fashion show. I think it's 100
% connected. When you experience that level of
profound, violent chaos so early, chaos that
you have zero control over, you often spend the
rest of your life trying to build a fortress
against it. You create a world where nothing
can explode. Where everything is clean. where
everything is ordered, where every single detail
is under your direct command. That makes so much
sense. His whole aesthetic is almost antiseptic,
but in a beautiful, calming way. It's like a
shield against the messiness of the world. It's
an aesthetic of total control. And what's so
interesting is that this traumatic hospital stay
didn't scare him away from medicine. It actually
did the opposite. It sort of seduced him. He
decided he wanted to be a doctor. He became obsessed
with it. He went to a top science -focused high
school, the Licio Scientifico Leonardo da Vinci.
And the notes mentioned a specific book that
really triggered this whole ambition for him.
Did you see that? It was a novel, right? The
Citadel. Yes, by A .J. Cronin. I have to admit,
I haven't read it. What's it about? It's not
a textbook. It's this classic novel about an
idealistic young doctor who goes to work in a
poor Welsh mining town. And he's just constantly
fighting against the bureaucracy, against the
incompetence of the system, trying to bring science
and compassion to this dirty, corrupt world.
So Armani saw himself as that hero, the guy who
comes in and fixes things, who brings order to
the chaos. He wanted to be the savior. So he
enrolls in the University of Milan's medical
school. And he's serious about it. He does three
full years. Three years is a long time. That's
not just a passing fancy. That's anatomy, physiology.
He would have been dissecting cadavers. He was
deep into it. He was fully committed. But then
came the reality check. In 1953, he has to leave
the university to do his mandatory military service.
And the army sees his record and says, perfect,
we know just where to put you. You can work in
the military hospital in Verona. And I'm guessing
the Verona military hospital in the early 50s
wasn't quite... The romantic, heroic struggle
he'd read about in The Citadel. It was the opposite.
It was a factory of misery. It was the grime,
the bureaucracy, the endless paperwork, the hopeless
cases. It was the smell of sickness without the
triumph of actually saving people. The sources
say he just hit a wall. He realized this wasn't
about heroism. It was about managing decay. He
wanted to be around beauty and health. Not that.
So he quits. He just walks away from a medical
career. He walks away completely. And this is
the part of his story I find so interesting.
Because in the Hollywood movie version, this
is where he has a flash of genius, sketches a
dress on a napkin, and becomes a star overnight.
But that is not what happened at all. No. He's
a dropout. He needs a job. So he ends up at La
Renaissance. The big, famous department store
in Milan. The only one that really mattered back
then. It was an institution. And his first job
is... A window dresser. And then an assistant
buyer. A sales clerk. Basically a retail guy.
And I think for a lot of people, that part of
the story, that period from 1957 to the mid -60s,
is just a footnote. But you're saying this is
where he learns the secret weapon that lets him
beat everyone else later on? This is the most
important part of his education. Period. He didn't
learn how to win in a design studio. He learned
it on the sales floor. What did he learn? How
to fold a sweater perfectly. He learned what
people actually buy. Think about it. Most of
the great designers, you know, your Yves Saint
Laurents, your Gallianos, they went to art school.
They studied color theory and sketching in a
classroom. They learned to make beautiful abstract
art. Right, they're in an ivory tower. Armani
was on the front lines. He was watching a real
businessman from Milan walk in, look at three
different jackets. touch the fabric of each one,
look at the price tag, and then either buy one
or walk out empty -handed. He was getting raw
data every single day. A constant feedback loop.
He was responsible for menswear. He was trying
to figure out how to sell these bold marameco
fabrics from Finland to conservative Italian
men. He was learning marketing and sales psychology
in real time. He learned that a jacket can be
a masterpiece, but if the armhole is cut just
a little too tight, the customer won't buy it.
If the fabric feels scratchy, he won't buy it.
That's the practical medical student's knowledge
of anatomy coming back, but in a totally different
context. Exactly. He understood comfort. He understood
that clothes are not just a statement. They are
a second skin that you have to live in. So he
spends basically his entire 20s and early 30s
just grinding it out in retail. He's not some
boy genius. He's a late bloomer. A total late
bloomer. He finally makes the jump in the mid
-60s, goes to work for Nino Cerruti as a menswear
designer. But even then, he's not satisfied.
And this is where the Armani machine really starts
to fire up. The sources list all the companies
he was freelancing for while holding down the
full -time job at Cerruti. I saw that list. It's
absurd. Allegri, Baguda, Hilton, Sikens. Ten
different manufacturers simultaneously. How is
that even physically possible? When did he sleep?
I have no idea. But think about the education
he's giving himself. He's designing a raincoat
for Legri, so he's learning about waterproof
fabrics. Then he's designing a suit for Hilton,
so he's learning about tailoring. Then a knit
for Sikens. He's learning the technical capabilities
and constraints of 10 different factories. He's
not just designing, he's learning the entire
supply chain. He's seeing the whole matrix. By
the time he's ready to launch his own brand,
he knows more about manufacturing than most of
the factory owners do. He knows where you can
cut costs without sacrificing quality. He knows
which fabrics work best on which machines. He's
a master of the craft and the commerce. But he's
still, you know, the guy behind the scenes. He's
the hired gun. He needs a push, a catalyst. And
then he meets the catalyst. Yeah. Enter Sergio
Galeotti. The partner. In every sense of the
word. They met in the late 1960s. Galeotti wasn't
in the fashion world at all. He was an architectural
draftsman. But he had this incredible business
mind. And he looked at Giorgio and just said,
what are you doing? You are wasting your talent,
making all these other people rich. He was the
ultimate hype man. He was the accelerator. Armani
was naturally cautious. Remember the bomb? Remember
the hospital? Yeah. His instinct was always safety,
control. Freelancing is safe. You get your check,
you go home. Starting your own business is pure
risk. Especially in Italy in the 1970s. We should
probably mention that context. The years of lead.
Oh, it was a terrible time. The Red Brigades,
domestic terrorism, political assassinations,
rampant inflation. It was a chaotic and dangerous
time to start any business, let alone a luxury
one. People were actually afraid to display wealth.
And Gagliotti just pushes him through all that
fear. He forced him. The story goes he made Armani
sell his old Volkswagen Beetle just to scrape
together enough cash to get an office. They sold
the car to start the company. They sold the car.
That's how much of a shoestring operation it
was. And in 1973, they opened this tiny little
design office at 37 Corso Venezia. Two years
later, on July 24th, 1975, Giorgio Armani S .P
.A. is officially born. And almost out of the
gate, he drops this bomb on the industry. The
good kind of bomb this time. The unconstructed
jacket. The weapon of mass reconstruction, you
could call it. I think for a lot of us listening,
the phrase unconstructed jacket just sounds like...
I don't know, a cardigan or maybe just a casual
blazer. Can you break down why this was such
a seismic event? Why do the history books all
fixate on this one garment? Okay, yeah. You have
to visualize what an average men's suit was like
in, say, 1974. I'm picturing something very stiff,
very structured. It was armor. Literally. The
inside of the chest was built with a heavy canvas
made of horse hair to make it stand up on its
own. It had thick, rigid shoulder pads to give
you this very square, formal silhouette. The
lining was tight. It gripped your body. When
you wore a suit, you felt it. You couldn't comfortably
lift your arms over your head. It sounds like
a corset for men. That is the perfect analogy.
It forced the body into an artificial shape.
And Armani, with his understanding of anatomy,
looked at this and said, this is absurd. The
body already has a shape. The fabric should follow
the body, not the other way around. So what did
he do technically? What did he remove? He just
gutted it. He performed surgery on the suit.
He ripped out the heavy horsehair canvas. He
took out the thick shoulder padding or replaced
it with something incredibly light and soft.
He moved the buttons to change the stress points.
He used fabrics that had never been used for
formal tailoring before, soft wools, crepes,
even linens, and treated them like they were
silk. He made the suit slouch. He invented slouchy
elegance. And for men, this was just a revelation.
It was a relief. All of a sudden, you could look
powerful and sophisticated, but you could feel
as comfortable as if you were in your pajamas.
But for women, this is where it goes from a fashion
story to a cultural revolution. The power suit.
Exactly. Think about the timeline. This is the
late 70s, early 80s. Women are entering the corporate
world, the boardroom. in numbers never before
seen. And they had a uniform problem. A huge
one. They basically had two terrible options.
Option A was to dress like a traditional secretary,
you know, a soft floral dress or a skirt and
blouse, and risk not being taken seriously. And
be seen as the girl. Right. Or there was option
B, where a direct boxy copy of a man's suit,
which often just looked like you were playing
dress -up in your father's clothes, felt like
a costume. And Armani comes in and offers option
C. He gave them a third way. He created a suit
that had broad, confident shoulders. So you physically
took up more space in the room. You looked formidable.
But the cut, the fabric, it was all fluid. It
was soft. It moved with the female form. It didn't
try to hide the woman inside the suit. It empowered
her. It was armor, but it was comfortable armor
designed for her. It's just wild to me that a
change in how a shoulder seam is sewn could have
a real impact on gender politics in the workplace.
But fashions never just clothes. It's a language.
It's semiotics. Armani gave a generation of professional
women a new vocabulary to speak power. He let
them be authoritative without having to sacrifice
their femininity. OK, so he's got the design
genius. He's timed it perfectly with this huge
social wave. But, you know, the history of fashion
is littered with brilliant designers who died,
broke or stayed a tiny niche brand. Armani died
with twelve point one billion dollars. And looking
at these financial reports in our stack, the
reason he was able to scale seems to come down
to one very boring sounding. acronym, GFT. Grupo
Financiario Tessio. This has to be the most unglamorous
part of the fashion business. I'm going to argue
it is the single sexiest, most revolutionary
business deal in the history of modern luxury.
I am dead serious. All right, convince me. Sell
me on GFT. Okay. The year is 1978. Before this
moment, the luxury world is totally binary. If
you're a rich man and you want a truly high -end
suit, you go to a tailor on Savile Row. Or in
Naples. Right. He measures you, he cuts the fabric
by hand, you come back for three fittings, you
wait six weeks, and you pay an absolute fortune.
That's couture. Even if you're just a normal
person. You go to an apartment store and you
buy confection. Mass -produced, often glued together,
ill -fitting suits off a rack. There was almost
nothing in between. A massive gap in the market.
And Armani saw that gap. He wanted to bridge
it. He wanted to sell that beautiful, revolutionary,
unconstructed jacket to a lawyer in Chicago,
a banker in Tokyo, and an architect in London
all at the same time. You can't do that if you're
sewing each one by hand in Milan. You need a
factory. So GFT was the factory. GFT was this
incredible high -end industrial manufacturer
based in Turin. They had the technology, the
machines to cut and sew with incredible precision,
but on an industrial scale. They were the best
in Italy. So Armani goes to them and strikes
a deal. He basically says, I will give you my
designs, and I will maintain obsessive quality
control, but you build the engines for me. It's
the Apple and Foxconn model, but for suits in
the 1970s. It is the exact same logic. Design
in -house, manufacture out. This deal effectively
invented the category of Predaporter Deluxe,
luxury ready to wear. All of a sudden, you could
walk into a store, buy a perfect Armani suit
right off the rack, and walk out with it that
day. It fit maybe 90 % as well as a bespoke suit,
but it was half the price and you got it instantly.
And that's when the financial fire hose just
turned on full blast. That's when he went from
being a celebrated Milanese designer to being
a global brand. This deal is what allowed him
to open the Giorgio Armani Corporation in the
U .S. in 1979. It was the engine of the entire
expansion. Which brings us to the next phase
of the business model, because the scaling went
way beyond just those high -end suits. He started
to slice and dice the brand itself. The democratization
phase, as he called it. The pyramid. Right. The
diffusion lines. Emporio Armani. Armani jeans.
AX Armani exchange. I mean, I vividly remember
Aotex Armani exchange being in the mall when
I was a teenager. And it was... Well, it was
not a luxury experience. It was loud music and
t -shirts. It was accessible. And that was the
entire point. But wasn't that a huge risk? The
industry must have thought he was crazy. If I
just drop $3 ,000 on a Giorgio Armani black label
suit, am I really happy seeing a 16 -year -old
at the mall wearing a $40 t -shirt with the same
name on it? Doesn't that dilute the brand? Doesn't
that devalue my expensive purchase? The traditional
luxury world thought he was committing brand
suicide. The French couturiers, the purists in
Paris, they openly laughed at him. They said,
Georgie is turning his name into a supermarket.
They thought he was cheapening the brand into
oblivion. But they were wrong. They were completely
wrong. Because Georgia wasn't thinking like a
fashion designer. He was thinking like a mathematician.
He understood what we now call the ladder of
luxury. Explain the ladder. How does it work?
It's a long -term strategy. You acquire the customer
when they're young and aspirational. You sell
that 16 -year -old the $40 AX t -shirt. They
can afford it. It makes them feel cool. It gives
them their first taste of the brand. They're
now part of the Armani tribe. So you get them
on the first rung of the ladder. Exactly. Then
that kid gets their first real job. Maybe they
upgrade to a pair of Armani jeans. Then they
get a promotion. They're in their late 20s and
they buy their first Emporio Armani suit. Then
years later, they make partner at the law firm
and they walk in and buy the $5 ,000 Giorgio
Armani. Mainline suit. He monetized the entire
life cycle of an aspiring human being. He grew
up with you. He grew with you. And let's be totally
honest about the business model here. The profit
margins on a $40 t -shirt or a $60 bottle of
perfume are infinitely higher than the margins
on a hand -finished couture gown. The cheap stuff
funds the expensive art. And the perfume deal,
the agreement with L 'Oreal in the early 80s,
that was just a license to print money. Acuity
Joe is still one of the best selling men's fragrances
in human history. That cash flow allowed him
to remain independent for decades while all his
rivals were going bankrupt and getting sold off.
That makes perfect sense. It's the perfume paradox.
Most accessible products keep the most exclusive
part of the house alive. He was a master of it.
But we can't talk about this 80s expansion without
talking about the pop culture moment that took
the brand from being merely successful to being.
Stratospheric. Hollywood. And one film in particular,
American Gigolo, 1980. It's the single greatest
piece of product placement in the history of
cinema. I don't think that's an exaggeration.
I would actually argue it's not even product
placement. The clothes are a co -star in the
film. They're a character. I rewatched that opening
scene this morning just to prep for this. And
what's so powerful about it is that there is
zero dialogue. None. It's just Richard Jarrah
looking impossibly handsome with Smokey Robinson's
The Love I Lost playing in the soundtrack. And
he's getting dressed. But it's not just a guy
putting on clothes. It's a ceremony. It's a ritual.
Yes. He yanks open these drawers and the camera
just lingers on these stacks of perfect shirts,
the ties. He lays out four or five complete outfits
on the bed. He's mixing and matching. The scene
is telling the audience everything they need
to know about this character, Julian Kang. It's
saying this man is meticulous. He's a narcissist.
He's obsessed with surface and appearance. He
is successful. He is sexy. And the visual shorthand
for all those qualities was the Armani label.
It feels like after that movie came out, if you
were a successful man in America, a guy on Wall
Street, a producer in Hollywood, and you didn't
own an Armani suit, you were almost signaling
that you weren't a serious player. You were invisible.
He completely owned the aesthetic of 1980s success.
And then he followed it up with The Untouchables
in 87. Which is funny because that's a period
piece. It's set in the 1920s with gangsters.
But he made them look impossibly cool. He made
Al Capone and the federal agents look like fashion
icons. He understood that Hollywood was the biggest
runway in the world. Why bother with a fashion
show for 500 editors in Milan when you can put
your clothes in a blockbuster movie that will
be seen by 50 million people around the globe?
It's just brilliant, integrated marketing before
that was even a buzzword. And it wasn't limited
to film. He had this deep connection to music,
too. The sources mentioned a really strong friendship
with Eric Clapton, which on the surface feels
like a really odd pairing. It does, doesn't it?
The gritty god of blues rock and the cool minimalist
Italian designer. But they were apparently best
friends. Clapton composed original music for
Armani's fashion shows in 1996. He played at
the opening of the Emporio Armani store in New
York. Armani would host these huge parties for
Clapton's charity auctions. And then... Fast
forward a couple of decades, and he's dressing
Lady Gaga. For the Monster Bowl tour, for the
Born This Way ball. I mean, just think about
that aesthetic range. He goes from the understated
masculine cool of Eric Clapton to the absolute
avant -garde, boundary -pushing theatricality
of Lady Gaga. It proves he wasn't just stuck
in his 80s power suit glory days. He knew how
to adapt. He stayed relevant. Most designers,
they have one great moment, one decade they define,
and then they become a legacy brand. Armani kept
reinventing the context for his clothes, while
the core aesthetic remained remarkably consistent.
But right in the middle of this incredible ascent,
I mean, the money is pouring in, the movies are
hits, the global expansion is happening, tragedy
strikes. And this part of the story, I think,
really reveals the core of the man. 1985. The
whole empire almost crumbled. Sergio Galeotti
dies. He was so young, he died of complications
from AIDS. Although at the time, like so many
in that era, it was often vaguely reported in
the press as heart failure or degenerative illness.
And this goes back to that partnership dynamic
we talked about. Galeotti was the business brain.
He was the CEO, the strategist. Armani was the
creative genius. That was the perception across
the entire industry. Giorgio draws the pretty
pictures, but Sergio is the one who actually
runs the company. So when Sergio died, the vultures
started circling immediately. Everyone assumed
Giorgio would sell the company. They assumed
he couldn't possibly run it himself. It must
have been just a personally devastating blow.
This wasn't just a business partner. This was
his life partner. Armani later called it his
greatest failure. Not a business failure, the
fact that he couldn't save him. He said he had
all the money and power in the world, and he
couldn't stop this virus. But he didn't sell.
He didn't crumble. No. And this is where that
incredible discipline, that medical student focus,
comes roaring back. He didn't fall apart. He
grieved, but then he absorbed Gagliotti's job.
He taught himself finance. He learned how to
read the contracts. He became the CEO and the
creative director. Which is incredibly rare in
any industry, let alone fashion. Usually the
top creatives make for terrible managers. It's
almost unique at that scale. He became a one
-man army. And he held on to that absolute control
for the next 40 years. He refused to let anyone
else in. He proved every single one of the skeptics
wrong. The business actually accelerated its
growth after Gagliotti's death. But that isolation,
that control, it kind of became his defining
public image, didn't it? The man behind the dark
sunglasses. It did. He became the hermit king
of fashion. He spent his free time on his enormous
yacht, the Maine. He surrounded himself with
a very tight circle of family. His sister Rosanna
was his muse, his nieces Silvana and Roberta,
his nephew Andrea. They all worked for the company.
It was a fortress. And speaking of that fortress,
we do have to touch on the complexity of his
personal views. Because while he was busy revolutionizing
how men and women presented themselves to the
world, some of his own social views were. Well,
they felt like they came from a much earlier
era. We have to talk about the comments. The
interview with the Sunday Times in 2015. Right.
Where he was asked about gay men's style. And
he said, quote, a homosexual man is a man 100
percent. He does not need to dress homosexual.
Which read today sounds pretty jarring. It caused
a huge backlash at the time. And rightly so.
People called it internalized homophobia. They
said it was deeply conservative. But I think
to understand it. Not to excuse it, but to understand
it. You have to see it through the lens of his
generation and his personal aesthetic. He was
born in 1934. He came of age in a time when discretion
was survival. His entire brand is built on understatement,
on quiet dignity. To him, anything loud or campy
or theatrical was undignified. It was a violation
of his core principle of quiet control. So it's
this fascinating contradiction. He's this pioneering,
openly gay man who built a global empire in a
creative industry, but he held these very...
traditionalist views on how people should express
themselves publicly. But people are complicated.
And Armani was very much a man of his time even
as he was designing the clothes for the future.
He just valued that quiet, controlled elegance
above all else. Let's zoom out a bit to the sheer
breadth of the empire he built in those later
years. Because it went so far beyond just clothes,
it became a lifestyle brand in the truest sense,
like sports, for example. I had no idea how deeply
involved he was in the sports world. Oh, he was
a fanatic, especially for basketball. He was
the owner and president of Olympia Milano, the
city's team. And not just a silent check writing
owner. He was involved. He was passionate. The
team won multiple Italian League titles under
his ownership. He said he loved basketball because,
unlike football, which can be so divisive, it
united the city. But he was into football soccer
as well. A huge Inter Milan fan. Yeah. But he
was pragmatic. He designed the formal suits for
the director's suite at Chelsea FC in London.
He designed the official suits for the England
national team for a while. And the Olympics.
Of course. He designed the uniforms for the Italian
national teams for the 2006 Winter Olympics in
Turin, the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, and
then more recently a big sponsorship with Scuderia
Ferrari in Formula One. He wanted the Armani
logo to be synonymous with excellence in performance,
whether on a runway or a racetrack. And then
you have the hotels. The Armani Hotel in Dubai.
Inside the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building
in the world. He has the bottom 39 floors. And
again, this is where you see the control freak
aspect in its purest form. He signed the deal
with Emar Properties, but he retained total creative
control over everything. Every piece of furniture
is from his Armani Casa home line. Every fabric,
every finish, the scent in the lobby. You weren't
just staying at a luxury hotel. You were literally
sleeping inside Giorgio Armani's brain. I do
want to touch on some of his ethical stances,
too, because in some areas he was actually way
ahead of the curve. He really was. In 2007, he
became the first major international designer
to ban models with a body mass index, a BMI under
18 from his shows. And this was right after the
tragic death of the Brazilian model Ana Carolina
Reston from anorexia. Yes. The industry was in
crisis over the size zero debate, and there was
a lot of talk. But Armani was the one who actually
took action and set a hard numerical rule. He
recognized that his clothes had a responsibility,
that they shouldn't demand an unhealthy body
type to be worn. And he was an early adopter
of sustainability, too. For the luxury space,
yes. He joined the Green Carpet Challenge back
in 2011. He created a dress for Livia Firth for
a red carpet event that was made entirely from
recycled plastic bottles. He was one of the first
to prove that sustainable materials could also
be high fashion. So he wasn't just this static
traditionalist figure. He was still evolving,
still adapting. Constantly, right up to the end.
Which brings us to the end, the final years.
The signs that something was changing started
to appear. In June of 2025, he missed Milan Fashion
Week for the men's collection. And that was a
first, right? He had never, ever missed a show.
He was always there backstage making final adjustments
himself. When he wasn't there, the whole industry
knew something was seriously wrong. The king
was tired. And then the news broke. September
4th, 2025, he passed away from liver failure
at his home in Milan. The response was immediate
and immense. They held a public wake at his own
performance space, the Armada Teatro, and something
like 15 ,000 people lined up to pay their respects.
15 ,000. That's the size of a sports arena. It
was an outpouring of grief for the city's patriarch.
And then the funeral on September 8th was a very
private affair, a burial in his family's chapel.
But this is where the story takes its final,
most fascinating turn, the will. It was released
to the public on September 12, and this is the
document that fashion analysts and business journalists
are still trying to fully unpack. This is the
twist ending to the entire 40 -year story. Because
for decades, Armani's entire identity was built
on one word. Independence. He refused to sell.
He watched as Gucci, Fendi, Bulgari, all the
other great Italian houses were bought up by
the big French luxury conglomerates LVMH and
Kering. He stood alone. Giorgio Armani SBA, independent
to the core. He was the last of the Mohicans,
the last Italian emperor holding out against
the French giants. He was. But the will changed
the entire game plan. So what did the will actually
say? What was the key provision? The key provision
instructs his heirs, which is a foundation he
set up, plus his family members, to sell an initial
minority stake of 15 % in the company. So after
all that, he's finally opening the door. He's
cracking it open. But here's the kicker. The
document lists his preferred... Priority buyers.
And who is on that list? LVMH, Eslo Luxottica,
or L 'Oreal? Wait, LVMH, as in Bernard Arnault,
the man who runs the conglomerate he spent his
entire life competing against? The very same.
Why? After fighting for independence for 40 years,
why give it up in your final instructions? I
think it's the ultimate act of pragmatism. Armani
was, above all else, a realist. He knew that
without him, without the singular vision of the
founder at the helm, the company would be vulnerable.
The global luxury market today is a brutal expense
of war. It requires billions in marketing spend,
massive global distribution networks, a huge
e -commerce infrastructure. And a standalone
family -run business, even one as big as Armani,
might struggle to compete in that environment
long term. Exactly. So by inviting a giant like
LVMH or L 'Oreal to come in and take a minority
stake, he's basically buying an insurance policy
for his legacy. He gets their financial muscle,
their distribution scale, and their political
protection, all without giving them total control
of the company. It's a strategic partnership
to ensure the brand survives. for the next 50
years. So in the end, he chose survival over
solitude. He chose legacy over ideology. He wanted
the name Armani to still mean something in the
year 2100. And he was smart enough to know that
to achieve that, the company needed powerful
allies after he was gone. It's just fascinating.
Even from the Grays, he's playing chess while
everyone else is playing checkers. Always the
master strategist. So when we look back at the
final tally, $1 .6 billion in annual turnover,
a personal fortune of $12 .1 billion, a life
of 91 years, what's the headline? How do you
sum up an impact that large? I think the BBC
probably put it best in their obituary. They
said he was responsible for the most lasting
change in the way we dress since Coco Chanel.
That is about the highest praise you can get
in fashion. Chanel is the absolute gold standard.
And I think it's accurate. Chanel freed women
from the corset in the 1920s. Armani freed everyone,
men and women, from the tyranny of stiffness
in the 1970s and 80s. He invented the power suit.
He basically invented the color grige. He made
luxury comfortable. It's just an incredible arc.
The boy who was burned by a forgotten tool of
war grows up to dress the most powerful and visible
people in the world. And not just dress them.
He changed how they felt in their own skin. He
gave them a uniform of quiet confidence. So here's
a thought to maybe leave everyone with. Giorgio
Armani spent his entire life building this impenetrable
fortress of independence. He was the undisputed
king in his own castle. But his very final act,
his will, was to open the drawbridge just a crack
to invite in the very giants he spent a lifetime
fighting. And it makes you wonder. Does a singular,
powerful vision like Armani's ever truly survive
its founder? Or does everything eventually inevitably
become just another valuable asset in a global
conglomerate's portfolio? It's the ultimate question
of legacy versus machinery. Can the soul of the
brand survive without the man himself? I guess
we're about to find out. So next time you put
on a jacket, any jacket, even if it's not an
Armani cheeky shoulder, if it's soft, if it moves
with you, if it doesn't feel like a cage, you
know who to thank for that. Thanks for joining
us for the deep dive. Goodbye, everyone.