Armani - Discovering Fashion - True Story Documentary Channel

[Music] thank you what he really did was take away the restrictions and confinements of stiffer styles that had gone before it he made it appropriate in the workplace for women to wear trouser suits he made men feel sophisticated and perfectly tailored changes in men's were happening incredibly rarely you have the rise of America in the early 20th century and that changed menswear you had the Industrial Revolution in the 19th and that changed menswear and what Armani did in the 70s changed menswear as well and it's affected the way that every suit in the world is made foreign was born in in picenza in Northern Italy in 1934 you do get a sense when he's talked about his upbringing that the war was very evident there's a story that he and one of his friends were playing with um an unexploded shell in the streets and the shell went off it killed his friend and it severely burnt Armani Armani's family were a middle class family and like others during the second World War suffered great hardship financially and Omani has said that you know even finding food was difficult at this period of time after the war and after studying medicine and being in the Army Armani went to work for a Milanese department store he always said that that for him was his introduction to kind of knowing about fabric but more importantly it was an introduction to customers this was really extraordinary step because it was a very forward-thinking pioneering store and he had suddenly access to really creative extraordinary people and he rose through the ranks very very quickly so he started doing buying soon after joining which I think is a very interesting kind of career path because extraordinary from others who have either other designers who have learned their craft from their mothers or have studied in a sort of art school um setting he really didn't he studied on the department store floor there's lots of pictures of him from around that and he was always kind of incredibly well presented he was a very precise child when he wound up meeting Nino chiruti who offered him his first kind of fashion job after working at the department store um chiruti's first comment to him was that he looked respectable and then he tossed a bunch of fabrics across to him and asked Armani to pick his favorites and Armani said it was lucky that he picked the same favorites as chirussi and that's why chiruti took him on as as kind of part of his company the first thing that she really did when Armani started there was was sent him to the the textile mills that chiruti still owns and operates to look at how cloth was made and Armani said really at that point there was that kind of imbued a certain passion for textile in him the fact that he was able to see how how fabric was constructed and able to experiment with it with a huge variety of fabrics obviously as a designer um that's something that's proved incredibly important it's something that he's still known for now his use of textile home in tailoring and how he's he was able to kind of soften tailoring and revolutionize it by using all the Fabrics that he was introduced to under his under his work at chiruti so a very similar aesthetic to what Armani then went on to in his own brand saruti had this really extraordinary way of using different Fabrics to tailor menswear and so Armani ended up working on zaruti's menswear line called Hitman and this is a really really exciting period of time where he kind of gained a language from being mentored by saruti really that whole way that the Beatles look the way that all of the mods looked in the 60s was Italian tailoring and and that was all based on these kind of very neat very precise very tight cuts and that was only possible through these incredibly Fine Fabrics and new kind of techniques of Tailoring [Music] towards the end of the 60s Armani met Sergio galiotti which marked the beginning of a personal and professional relationship for galeotti was a friend of Armani he became Armani's lover but he was also the person that really encouraged Armani to break out on his own he said to Armani why are you designing these wonderful clothes for all these other people why aren't you designing them for yourself why aren't you doing it under your own name and this spurred on Armani to take contracts as a freelancer so designing for a range of different designers and I think that that sets him on the path that we now associate with him really it was off the back of all of this freelance and the money that Armani had made from his freelance work and actually from selling his car him and um galliotti sold the Volkswagen that they owned together to get seed capital of ten thousand dollars to to start their own company there was only one table that Armani will be drawing on one side in galliotti will be trying to work out the business on the other side you know it was it was an incredibly small company Don mellow actually said in one of his early collections that the lighting was so bad Armani ended up getting up and taking the shade off the lamp so they could so it was a Bare Bulb so she could see the colors of the clouds better and she bought the collection because what Armani did at that time was to in in very broad terms to soften menswear and to hardened women's work the first line to spring summer night 1976 was really all about celebrating this craft of supper lines slightly wider trouser legs in really really delectable Fabrics so it was really quite fresh but in a very kind refined way this whole idea of adding a certain sensuality and softness to men's suits and creating something that chimed with this kind of wave of femininity That Was Then affecting society as a whole but actually not affecting High fashion or to a great degree but what Armani did was to to kind of work on perfecting a uniform for a new generation of working women and in in the 70s that seemed revolutionary and obviously what it actually did was set the blueprint for the 80s in 1978 Armani signed an agreement with clothes manufacturer gft in the history of the company DFT gave them Financial backing and this was really integral because it meant that their production and textile manufacture was really really supported they had done extraordinarily well turning over 2 million sales in in just the first few years of being founded in the same year the same group made an agreement with Versace to manufacture his clothes as well and really what that was seen as in fashion at the time was this rise of Milan as a competitor to Paris and it was this rise of Italy as a commercial and a creative force in fashion and a real challenge to the kind of supremacy of Paris at that period in the United States Armani's designs were received really very very well you know GQ referred to it in the late 70s as the total low in Armani Coming to America in 1979 it's it's notable that that was the first time his clothes were were available in the country and by the end of the 80s Armani had become the biggest selling European designer in the whole of the United States I think after the the 70s the the 80s really became a decade that was about designers um more so actually than the clouds the interesting thing with when you look at Armani's designs for women's wear especially if you compare it to someone like Versace who generally didn't make clothes that exuded femininity in the same way that Versace did they weren't kind of clothes that were about women with enormous personalities but for a lot of women they found a certain comfort in that they found that it was the way that they wanted to dress to feel confident to feel secure and to feel that they could compete in a man's world it was a really extraordinary kind of marriage with these women looking for things to wear in in this business corporate sense but that really enhance their elegance and their beauty but were appropriate in terms of getting confidence and feeling strong and independent the tailoring Fabrics that were used were not the stiff and stuffy Fabrics that had been used previously they were soft and fluid the first Armani Spa store in Milan was in 1983. Armani and galiotto took their time to open this space so really being super selective about the way in which they sold their comments so really from the very beginning it was one store in major cities that were selling just a very limited stock which added to this exclusivity soon off today open on Madison Avenue in New York and then following with London and I think these shops really kind of helped to make them a global brand but it was all very considered the 1980s started well for Armani as he continued to find new ways in which to Showcase his brand to a worldwide audience kind of concurrently strangely the things that happened were he dressed Richard Gere for American Gigolo he launched Emporio Armani and he launched Armani perfume in the early 80s Armani partnered up with L'Oreal and created a line of fragrances this was very interesting in the sense that they were an extension of the brand so more in terms of the total look that his clothes could create also you're now playing into a scent that the Armani woman would wear the interesting thing with Armani signing the agreement with L'Oreal is is first of all that L'Oreal and don't sign these agreements very often it was 20 years after Armani before they signed anyone new to to collaborate with on a fragrance line it's building this kind of idea that this is a lifestyle but to fit in with the life that you already have when they actually first approached Armani to to dress American Gigolo um Armani said he would do it because he knew he was launching empowering Armani and he knew the publicity that it would generate for him so he knew he was launching a lower price more widely available brand and he wanted to be able to capitalize on the publicity that the film would generate for him something that that mind an era ERA American Gigolo became this kind of classic film where these suits worn by gear it was just so perfect for the character Armani really understanding exactly the way in which clothes can tell narrative within this sphere of film I think when you watch that film when you look at it at times it's like an extended advert for Armani you know you look at the stills from it and they could be Armani advertising campaigns from the same time um and today it seems sort of commonplace but then it was it was really unique especially menswear to have that kind of vision presented cinematically and then also to suddenly have a lower price line that you could buy into a perfume line that you could buy into commercially it was incredibly Savvy to to kind of capitalize on the publicity that was generated from that and I think that was probably what really established Armani's name in America say ing you Lord me having found success with his work on American Gigolo Armani continued to dress many of Hollywood's biggest films after American Gigolo Armani went on to design costumes for films notably Batman Pulp Fiction but the real big hitter I think in terms of Legacy was Miami Vice which was a TV show but really sort of defined the 80s in many ways the costumes in themselves unlike American Gigolo where the costumes were absolutely the focus the costumes aren't especially remarkable what I find remarkable is that they're certainly the later incarnations of that are for me a reflection of of Armani's relationship with Hollywood which in the late 80s and early 90s really blossomed into something Beyond films Armani became the first designer that was actively petitioning to dress people for the red carpet but a time when no other fashion houses were doing that he offered to dress them in high fashion that was desirable and low-key which obviously is a major part of Armani's aesthetic it's the fact that it is quite subdued it is elegant it is low-key it's minimalist it's simple and all of those things appeal to Hollywood stars he is so intertwined with this kind of Oscar season dressing that is reported by you know far and wide and a real Obsession in popular culture [Music] when Sergio galiotti died in in 1985 of an aids-related illness Armani kind of retreated into himself the big impact it had on the company was that Armani didn't replace him um Armani took on the mantle of financial responsibility and creative responsibility for his Empire you know there is this whole sense that Armani doesn't have any children I feel like Giorgio Armani as a company is is kind of his baby it's something that you know he cares for He nurtures it he looks after it and it's something that he wants to see succeed and you can see that in in terms of the turnover and the passion the the expansion of Armani which continued all the way through the night and continues until today [Music] foreign exchange Armani jeans and polio Armani ea7 the sportswear line it's again it's about Armani diversifying it's about a certain demand I feel for for Armani's product and for Armani's name there's a certain power to that name in any other designer it will be watering it down and it would affect the brand value but with Armani he's really able to do that Armani Exchange really kind of rode this wave of kind of Street culture and streetwear instead of perhaps creating it themselves but I think it was again this kind of magnificent foresight to uh design lines and ranges and items for everybody for him this wheel kind of synergy between all of these lines there isn't one that is kind of the the main focus of his attention there isn't one that he rates higher than any of the others he's involved in all of them they have different characters for instance when you look at Armani Prive which was the is the Okeechobee election he launched in early 2000 um I feel there's a certain sort of eccentricity to that that you don't see it in Armani's other endeavors [Music] in a sense I feel it's about knowing your customer it goes back to him at that department store it's knowing what your customer demands or all these different levels and that an oak for your customer will demand something that's more unique more singular these are one-off dresses the dress is handmade and they'll only be kind of a maximum of six of each design produced so really they're a venue for Armani to explore his creativity but there's a reality to them there's a market to them and I'm only Private Sales like every aspect of the Armani Empire it makes commercial sense first and foremost in the year 2000 there was a flurry of investments in the company and these activities really contribute to consolidating the brand this was a period when fashion conglomerates were buying up other labels at a voracious Pace um Gucci had bought into East San Leon so at that time Armani seemed kind of prime either to be invested in by one of these large conglomerates or to become a conglomerate unto itself so really what Armani decided to do rather than take outside investment was to to expand internally to take on licensees to license things out to really become kind of a conglomerate all under the Armani name and really when I think Armani is a conglomerate that's composed of Armani labels and is is controlled and designed by one man and that's something that's quite extraordinary in the year 2000 the Guggenheim Museum in New York hosted an exhibition of Armani's work Armani I'm being celebrated in an Art institution really made people look at his work in a different light maybe perhaps made Armani look at his work in a different light but obviously it generated some controversy in terms of people questioning whether or not you could call fashion art it was an absolutely ginormous exhibition over 400 garments which is really extraordinary exhibitions of this type range between the 100 to 200 pieces and he really enjoys it because he got to show the more outlandish of his designs that weren't received so well by perhaps his customers and also the Press foreign [Music] thing with with Armani Casa is that it's very much a representation of the Armani aesthetic um and the Armani aesthetic is very much a representation of at times so the fact that the critics were incredibly enthusiastic about what Armani was doing for Home Design as well as what he was doing for fashion design um is really kind of an indication of how tidy is with popular culture if you look right back to very early on in his career where American journalists for GQ defines his clothing as the total look here you're really getting this home whole life look and I think that really becomes interesting when you look at the type of things he was designing not only for clothing but for the house [Music] well I think the idea of Armani broadcasting his Spring 2007 Couture live on the Internet is is very interesting because again it's kind of like American Gigolo it's this whole idea of taking something Niche something exclusive and opening it up to people opening it up to appeal to everybody and really it's I I think that's a game very much about opening up this close world and broadcasting the name really cementing his place in in mass culture as well as in kind of the fashion Elite foreign designing of Chelsea Football Club suits and the Italian teams link picks outfits there is a kind of very interesting look at the way in which sports and fashion designers kind of marry and work together so I think designing for someone like Chelsea Football Club again puts puts his designs in people's minds [Music] in 2011 Armani had what is referred to as his blue period such as Picasso's blue period and these Blues were across the board Azure midnight blue navy and it showed a real kind of in herent sophistication in terms of color palette which shows the mark of a very fine designer [Music] the reason no money is so incredibly important and it's something that really gets overlooked is that Armani changed the way clothes are made and that's such a fundamental thing that and it's something that so few people can can lay clown to foreign 's Legacy is really associated with the suits and the wearing of the suit within kind of popular culture this inherent sense of confidence wearing something that you know is impeccably thought through really appealed to people and I think it still does one of my favorite facts about Armani is that when he has a swimming pool the swimming pool is um a yard wide and 50 yards long it's the minimum amount of water you need to be able to swim the laps that Armani does and it's a strip of water and that's what he swims in every day this whole idea of this incredibly precise engineered lifestyle incredibly minimalist stripping everything away and I think that's evident in his clouds and its evidently his life as well tonight and as long as I got myself [Music] [Music] swing of Love let me show you a few things

Channel: True Story Documentary Channel

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Keywords: documentaries, odisea, documentales, full, documentary, films, true, story, free documentary, watch free documentary, current affairs, 60 minutes, nightline, armani, fashion

Id: bTeSRYANyx4

Length: 22min 36sec (1356 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 15 2022