Why it belongs in ORBIS
Milan maison founded in 1975 by Giorgio Armani and Sergio Galeotti, launched with proceeds from selling Armani's Volkswagen Beetle; introduced the unstructured jacket in its 1976 menswear debut, stripping padding and stiff canvas for a fluid, natural shoulder.
Giorgio Armani opened his own house in Milan in 1975 together with business partner Sergio Galeotti, an architect, financing the venture partly with money raised from selling Armani's Volkswagen Beetle. The house's spring/summer 1976 menswear debut introduced what became its defining innovation: the unstructured jacket, which removed the traditional padding, canvas and stiff interfacing of tailored jackets in favor of a soft, fluid shoulder and a more natural line. A women's version followed within months. Italian press dubbed Armani 'the first postmodern designer,' and in 1982 he became only the second fashion designer, after Christian Dior, to appear on the cover of Time magazine. The unstructured aesthetic reached a global audience through film and television, notably Richard Gere's wardrobe in American Gigolo (1980) and the tailoring seen throughout Miami Vice in the mid-1980s. Galeotti remained Armani's business partner until his death in 1984. Giorgio Armani died in September 2025 at age 91, closing out five decades as the house's founder and creative lead.