SAEDNEWS: Giorgio Armani, the Milan-based designer who reshaped menswear, popularized the pared-back jacket and turned red-carpet dressing into a cultural moment, has died at 91, the Armani Group said on Thursday; the company said he passed away peacefully surrounded by loved ones.
Giorgio Armani, the Italian designer whose minimalist elegance transformed modern tailoring and helped make red-carpet fashion a global spectacle, has died aged 91, the Armani Group announced on Thursday. In a statement, the company described Armani as a “tireless driving force” and said employees and family would preserve his legacy and carry the house forward in his memory.
Born in 1934 in Piacenza, northern Italy, Armani’s route into fashion was unconventional. After studying medicine and completing military service he found work as a window dresser at Milan’s La Rinascente department store. That early apprenticeship led to a position designing menswear for Nino Cerruti in the 1960s, where he first honed the unstructured jacket that would become his signature: softer, less padded tailoring that followed the body rather than forcing it into rigid form.
With business partner and life companion Sergio Galeotti, Armani launched his own label in 1975. The brand broke into the American market almost at once — Barneys in New York stocked his menswear in 1976 — and a few years later his pared-back suits were immortalised when Richard Gere wore Armani in the 1980 film American Gigolo. That red-carpet exposure helped establish Armani as a shorthand for discreet luxury: power dressing for women and a kinder, gentler silhouette for men.
Armani’s influence grew through an expanding family of labels — Emporio Armani, Armani Exchange, Armani Jeans and the haute couture line Armani Privé — as well as a global retail, hotel and lifestyle empire. Unusually for a designer of his stature, Armani remained the company’s sole shareholder, keeping creative and commercial control long after many peers sold out to multinational groups. Bloomberg Intelligence estimated the business’s value at roughly €8–10 billion in 2024.
Personal loss and reinvention marked his story. Galeotti’s death from AIDS in 1985 left Armani as sole head of the company; he continued to steer its creative direction for decades. He also bridged fashion and sport, buying basketball club Olimpia Milano in 2008 and launching the EA7 sportswear line. Armani’s tailoring and powerful women’s suits have endured in the wardrobes of actresses, politicians and executives — a measure of how deeply his aesthetic entered public life
Even in his later years Armani remained active in the business. He missed his usual bow at Milan Men’s Fashion Week in June 2025 — the first time he had skipped his own show — with the company saying he was recovering at home. Plans to mark his 50th anniversary in fashion with exhibitions and a show in Milan were due to coincide with this season’s schedule; those tributes now take on the weight of farewell.
Armani collected official honours and served on the international stage: he was named a Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 2021 and became a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador in 2002. His work — the soft-shouldered jackets, the quiet luxury and the insistence that clothes should serve the person, not the other way around — reshaped how generations dress for business, film and formal life.
The immediate future of the Armani empire — which has no publicly obvious single heir — will be closely watched by the fashion world and markets alike. For many observers, Armani’s true legacy is less about brand valuations than the clothes themselves: a timeless lesson in restraint, fit and the power of understated confidence that will endure on runways and in wardrobes for decades to come.
