I'll come right out and say it. Giorgio Armani is the most important designer of the 20th century. Chanel and Dior were masters but had no menswear; YSL another master but a minimal effect on what was then an emgering "designer menswear" market. No one before or since has had as much impact on both mens and womens design at the same time as Armani did from 1982 to around 1995. Like Chanel, Dior,and YSL, Giorgio Armani truly created his own design vocabulary. It is sometimes hard to remember that, at one point, Armani was just another young designer struggling to create a name for himself. To be honest though, Armani was never just a struggling unknown designer .
Below I have retyped (from the English translation in the back of the magazine) an article on Armani that was printed in L'Uomo Vogue in October 1974. Giorgio had just shown his first collection (Spring '75) under his own label but, as you will read, Giorgio was already a well known and highly regarded member of the Milan design community. In the coming weeks I will discuss some of the other very unique elements that helped make Giorgio Armani into GIORGIO ARMANI.
In the meantime please enjoy the photo of Armani modeling clothes (nice twinset) that he designed for Umberto Ginocchietti and Barba's in the final collection he designed as a freelance designer. I will be posting more from this editorial in the next few days.
L'Uome Vogue October/November 1974 "The New Man of Italian Fashion"
This year Giorgio Armani is the main topic of conversation even if, when a definition is required, no proper term is available; Stylist, designer, dressmaker? No, either too loose or too limiting definitions. Perhaps the best definition is: the new man of Italian fashion, The man representing a new international establishment for our ready-to-wear clothes. No doubt, this is the year of his debut, even if, strange as it may sound, when thinking of him that for years now is going full swing. Until yesterday, after all, he never showed his collection with his name. He kept away from the show-window. He allowed his collection to be shown with labels of the firms with which he collaborated. But he could not miss a date with Milan, the new center of men’s fashion. Finally he decided: he joined all his collections and introduced himself personally in the halls of the extremely old Carminati restaurant in the Piazza del Duomo for the spring dress rehearsal