The Bite Magazine - Spring 2016 - Issue 15

had 20 days off on vacation in Milan,” he told Time magazine. “Through a friend, I got a job at a department store where I started assisting the photographer, designing the windows and things.” Once he completed his military service,Armani dropped out of university and worked at La Rinascente, a famous department store in Milan. After this, he joined the staff of Nino Cerruti as a designer and upon advice from his friend Sergio Galeotti; Armani started doing freelance design work for other companies as well. In 1973-1974, at the prestigious Sala Bianco fashion show in Florence, the self- taught fashion designer presented a line of bomber jackets that treated leather as an everyday fabric which became known as a ‘defining characteristic of his style’. In July 1975, Armani and Galeotti became business partners and founded Giorgio Armani S.p.A. The two men did not waste time in presenting their first collection – a men’s clothing line – that same year, with a woman’s collection fol- lowing a year later. It was a very good time for the label as Armani’s clothes were revolutionary at the time and intro- duced a more natural fit as well as using a colour palette. “My vision was clear: I believed in getting rid of the artifice of clothing. I believed in neutral colours,” he told WWD . His trademark designs successfully reinterpreted the traditional business suits with unstructured, relaxed designs for men and masculine styles for women. Adding to this, his power suits for both men and women came to ‘sym- bolise an era of international economic boom’ in the 1980s. “I was the first to soften the image of men, and harden the image of women,” he declared.“I dressed men in women’s fabrics and stole from men what women wanted and needed – the power suit.” Armani became the first fashion designer to appear on the cover of Time magazine since Christian Dior in the 1940s and was one of the first designers to approach celebrities to wear his designs. He also invited Hollywood stars to wear his designs at the Academy Awards, cre- ating a following of celebrities such as Michelle Pfeiffer and Jodie Foster. This started the trend of celebrities dressing in designer wear on the red carpet.With there being so much more to Giorgio Armani than just designing on-trend clothes for men and women, the designer also finds time to create costumes for theatre and stage. He recently dressed the Italian and English soccer teams as well as Alitalia airline flight attendants. In 2000 and 2001, a major retrospective of the designer’s work was displayed at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. A year later, Armani was appointed Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Ref- ugees. For the 2006 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony, he designed the uniform for the Italian flag-bearers and also various professional athletic teams. He has even constructed a mansion on bitedesignerprofile