Giorgio Armani: Master of elegance

The king of understated dress, Giorgio Armani explains why great style requires charm, confidence and a dash of daring

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Giorgio Armani will forever be celebrated as the man who, in the mid-'70s, freed men’s suiting from rigid tailoring, ripping the guts out of jackets and doing away with padding to create a looser, more fluid look in superior fabrics, from fine wool to lightweight linens and soft Italian cottons. It was a revolutionary moment in fashion; one that changed both men’s and women’s suiting for ever. The designer unpicked the seams of structured tailoring and paved the way for more casual dress codes, bringing refinement, style and subdued elegance to a decade otherwise defined by flamboyance.

By the '80s, Armani’s version of power dressing was not about ostentation and self-aggrandisement, but rather it aimed to seduce, marking a move towards a new luxury ideal: that of fashion being just one branch of a broader, more discerning metropolitan attitude. Armani drove the desire for a pared- back, edited lifestyle, propelled by a timeless aesthetic that continues to be the touchstone of his universally powerful brand to this day.

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