20 Questions: Giorgio Armani

Ferrari. Maserati. Lamborghini. Armani. The last marque debuted in 1975, when Milan fashion designer Giorgio Armani introduced a new kind of men's jacket. Its hallmarks were relaxed tailoring and soft fabrics. Armani's wrinkle was to eliminate the canvas lining of the suit jacket so that it would drape the body more comfortably. The new jacket was designed for what Armani termed "less formal times." The traditional men's uniform--the three-button Ivy League suit--faced real competition.

During the Eighties, Armani's designs took men's fashion by storm. Men discovered that his clothes were comfortable and that they gave them a feeling of self-assurance. They spoke of hanging an Armani in their closet in much the same way they talked about parking a BMW in their garage. The Armani look has become synonymous with contemporary clothing and the ascendancy of Italian fashion. His designs for both sexes are elegant but not flashy. When his subdued colors were once described as muddy, Armani took it as a compliment.

Armani did not learn to sew at his mother's knee. After trying med school and photography, he took a job as a department-store window dresser and worked his way up to menswear buyer. He struck out on his own as a designer. Legend has it that he and a partner launched the Armani label with capital raised from the sale of a Volkswagen. That investment netted a good return. Forbes magazine notes that in 1990 consumers spent $1.6 billion on Armani merchandise. And he owns his company outright.

Contributing Editor Warren Kalbacker met the designer at his palazzo in Milan. One of Armani's assistants served as his interpreter. But, Kalbacker reports, "Armani's expressive face and hands, and his laughter, propel his opinions beyond any language barrier. And the espresso at Via Borgonuovo 21 is terrific."

1.

[Q] Playboy: Did you invent the sports jacket or does it just seem that way?

[A] Armani: The jacket is my signature, the first thing I wanted to do. I invented a type of sports jacket that's relaxed, informal, less stiff. The suits I designed for Richard Gere to wear in American Gigolo marked the beginning of a new way of dressing in America and Italy. The body moved easier in a suit made of soft fabrics.

2.

[Q] Playboy: What was wrong with clothing before you came on the scene?

[A] Armani: Sports jackets in the Fifties were square, boxy and rigid. It didn't look like there was a body underneath. And the sensuality of men in the Fifties and Sixties was precise. The Latin look was considered sexy: the open shirt, the hairy chest and the gold chain. Factories sprung up in Italy that could produce a technically perfect jacket. Constructed. Formal. Rigid. Shaped. Perfect seams. They turned out the jackets like cars--they all looked the same. My jackets were a reaction to these. I wanted to make suits look like they'd been done by a tailor. The intelligent man doesn't like to go out and buy himself new clothes.

3.

[Q] Playboy: You're a fan of Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart and you've even acknowledged the influence of Raiders of the Lost Ark. What is it with Giorgio Armani and the movies?

[A] Armani: My inspiration has come largely from American films of the Forties. These films came to Italy after the war, when I was young. People in these films had a special kind of elegance. They wore jackets that had obviously been made by hand and were imperfect in some way. The jackets did not look mass-produced. My costume designs for The Untouchables were an attempt to bring back this look.

4.

[Q] Playboy: Italian design is renowned. Does every Italian grow up wanting to create cars or clothes?

[A] Armani: I didn't want to go into fashion. But design is in our history, dating from the fantastic Italian artisans of the Renaissance. Their workmanship was so sophisticated and beautiful. You're born with it and it's something you grow up with. You see that beauty inside any building in any town in Italy. Fashion wasn't something I ever considered. But I had precise ideas of what I wanted to wear and I could never find them. Certain basic types of clothes existed in America after the war that didn't exist in Italy. And I wanted a black turtleneck and a red-and-white checked shirt.

5.

[Q] Playboy: You spent two years in medical school. If you hadn't coveted the black turtleneck and checked shirt, would you be Giorgio Armani, M.D.?

[A] Armani: In typical middle-class Italian families at that time, one son became a lawyer, another went into medicine. I was genuinely interested in medicine, so it wasn't something I was forced into. But I was nineteen or twenty, and it was not a time when I was thinking about what I was going to do in life. I used to do life drawings and take photos. I was interested in the form of the human body, whether it was something to cure or something to dress.

6.

[Q] Playboy: You've claimed that the sight of Lauren Hutton, Julia Roberts and Michelle Pfeiffer inspires you to dress them. Is it our lack of sartorial imagination when that trio inspires a different reaction in us?

[A] Armani: [Laughs] It's my job to dress people.

7.

[Q] Playboy: Why are your women's clothes much more subdued in color and much less revealing than the couture offered by other designers?

[A] Armani: When I design, I'm trying to make a woman sexy. I see a woman as sexy when she's covered from head to toe. My contemporaries are designing clothes so that women parade around wearing nothing. I'd feel ridiculous doing that. A sensual woman is not a woman who is showing her breasts or her bottom. It's difficult for a woman with a big chest to be elegant. Sensuality in a woman is conveyed by the way that she looks at something, the way she looks at you, the way she moves her hand. A woman should make a man understand that what she wears is very much her own, not just something she's flung on. She has to be secure in what she wears.

8.

[Q] Playboy: Do men make a (continued on page 167)Giorgio(continued from page 116) mistake by undressing women with their eyes?

[A] Armani: Yes, men are naive in that way. They stop at basic sensations. There are men who do look beyond the obvious features when they look at women. And those are the kind of men I want to dress.

9.

[Q] Playboy: But don't you concede that lingerie holds an intrinsic appeal for men? What specific advice can you offer for men who are compelled to give lingerie as a gift?

[A] Armani: Yes, it's something for men. It hides but also lets you see. Men want to discover for themselves what's there. It's a man's task to discover. He wants to have the pleasure of discovering.

Lingerie is a great present. But no corsets. Get something that slips and slides down--like what Kim Basinger wore in 9-1/2 Weeks. There was great lingerie in that film. She wore a very simple slip with two little straps. Silk. Satin. Yes. Champagne color. Lingerie must be simply cut in rich, luxurious material. Nothing fussy, nothing wild, nothing lacy. No bows, no latching, no laces. Those corsets with the laces and bows call to mind prostitutes and brothels. That may be erotic, but it's not what you'll see on a woman wearing Armani.

10.

[Q] Playboy: Men come in a variety of shapes and present a gaggle of fashion challenges. What's the toughest part of a man's body to clothe?

[A] Armani: If the chest is too big, broad, muscular, it's difficult to dress. A thin man is more elegant than a big muscular man. No Schwarzeneggers. The waist is the easiest part of the man to dress. And men tend to have small waists. There's lots of room there to tuck shirts into trousers so it looks comfortable. Trousers should always seem bigger than the waist. They should never be perfect on the waist. Some men are even wearing trousers two sizes too big. And shirts should be slightly longer than an exact fit. The neck of the shirt should be minutely out of proportion: a little bit longer, a little bit higher.

11.

[Q] Playboy: Men's bodies change as they age. Can a man who is no longer thin hope to achieve the Armani standard of elegance?

[A] Armani: Conserve your body. Work out and stay fit. If you're twenty-five and you wear a tight white T-shirt, it's OK. You get older and it begins to be not OK. That doesn't mean you have to stop dressing in a sporty way. But compete with the young man on the aesthetic. Give over physical beauty to more of a mental thing. It's better that a man of a certain age not wear jeans. I wear American jeans here because they're practical to work in. But I wouldn't go out wearing jeans now.

12.

[Q] Playboy: We understand you have more sympathy than some maître d's for the man who finds a necktie uncomfortable.

[A] Armani: It's not necessary to wear a tie to be elegant. It's a decorative detail. Whether or not to wear a tie depends on the way you're feeling. But if you're going out to dinner with a girlfriend, a tie adds a lot to your appearance. Young men have learned over the years how to appeal to women. The jacket and shirt give them a sense of order, of cleanliness. It shows that they've made an effort. It's a sensual game.

13.

[Q] Playboy: Are designers reluctant to display their wares on supermodels because they tend to upstage the merchandise?

[A] Armani: Cindy Crawford is a beautiful woman. If Cindy walks down the runway, you don't look at the clothes anymore. You look at Cindy. The supermodels are not runway models. They are photographic models. I didn't use any for my latest collection. They create all kinds of problems. Also, they have become such stars they often don't want to be made up the way I want a model to be done for a fashion show. They may not even get into the clothes. For fashion shows we make smaller sizes, so that's a problem for some of these top models. They're too big, too tall, too wide.

14.

[Q] Playboy: You wear jeans at work and you've offered baseball shirts in your collections. How much influence do you concede to America?

[A] Armani: Americans have had a remarkable influence. If you wait outside a school here in Milan, you'll think you're outside an American school, the way all the children are dressed. It's the right way for young people to dress. It's comfortable and practical. What's negative is when these basic items are taken to be fashion. People can't dress that way for a walk on the Via Monte Napoleone [a chic Milan street]. That would be ridiculous. Rambos wouldn't fit in at all on Via Monte Napoleone.

15.

[Q] Playboy: Is Italian culture our last, best hope?

[A] Armani: I find that to be true. When I go abroad--apart from certain regions in France--it really comes home to me just how lucky the Italians are. There's a richness of life here that can be seen in the amount of time that people devote to the family, to the food they eat, to decorating their houses. There's this search for quality. People put a tremendous amount of research into finding the right table for their dining room. But this is a delicate moment, even for Italy. Television and the influence of America have changed a lot of things.

16.

[Q] Playboy: So you don't agree that the current craze for motorcycle garb projects a "healthy, normal sensuality"?

[A] Armani: Men and women have been abused in the past few years. They've been made into cartoon characters with all these exaggerated fashions. Stretchy spandex. Forcing men into black leather jackets and tight pants and dressing women like Jane Fonda in Barbarella. It's OK in film but not in real life. This is a terrible image. This way of dressing people shows a lack of respect. Thank God, jeans are back. A nice shirt and pair of jeans show a clean state of mind. I'm a sensual person who wants people to love one another, but my conception of sensuality is different.

17.

[Q] Playboy: You once chided a model for walking provocatively while she rehearsed for one of your shows. Did you suspect she lacked a clean state of mind?

[A] Armani: I remember the incident. The whole idea of a fashion show is to create harmony, to have the models look the same. When one of them personalizes too much, it breaks the rhythm. Recently, fashion shows have tended to be very vulgar. Degrading. Women with their hands on their crotches, with their breasts showing. I'm not a prude. I was the first designer to have a nude man stand on a runway. He came out at the end of the show, stood with his back to everybody and waved goodbye. There was a big scandal following the show. Everybody was saying, How could Armani do that? But I did it with elegance. A few years later I had a model come out on the runway wearing a pair of jeans, topless. It's not that I don't want to show particular parts of the body, but it's the context in which you do it and what you see as sensual. Playboy was the first magazine to show women nude with a certain elegance. That's a fact, not a compliment. The same with the Crazy Horse nightclub in Paris, which had nude women onstage. But it was done with such elegance.

18.

[Q] Playboy: Will the power suit be hanging in closets in the Nineties?

[A] Armani: Old concept. Out of date. A man can go into an office and exude power without wearing the kind of suit that you relate to people who are powerful. I often meet with important lawyers and businessmen dressed like this [Armani is wearing a black turtleneck and black trousers] and I think I give the impression of being a handsome man without wearing a suit. I wasn't born successful. I became Armani. The world changes. At some point a different outfit will denote power. That's one side of my success I don't like, the whole thing about status symbols. People who worry about status symbols are volatile. Later, they'll move on to something else they consider important. Someone with that attitude does not appreciate a natural style of dressing.

19.

[Q] Playboy: Is beauty only skin deep?

[A] Armani: I'm sensitive to beauty. A beautiful woman is a woman who doesn't let you live. You're always terrified that this woman is going to leave you, that she's going to get bored and run off with someone else. That's a terrible condition to find yourself in. It would be difficult to live with that sort of love for somebody and then one day she's just not there anymore. Maybe it's much better to have a woman who's not so beautiful but who becomes somebody very beautiful to you in private. Maybe my designs are a defense against beauty, against somebody who's so beautiful. I go for personality over beauty or intelligence.

20.

[Q] Playboy: Oscar nights have showcased quite a bit of Armani in recent years. Are you out to deprive us of Hollywood's tradition of stunning décolletage?

[A] Armani: [Laughs] There's a lot left to do there still. There's a lot left.

the reigning doge of men's fashion explains why we shouldn't undress women with our eyes and asserts the tie is always optional

"Lingerie is a great present. But no corsets. Get something that slips and slides down.