Giorgio Armani Talks To British Vogue About His 50 Years In Fashion

More details: Found here

"I have always looked forward and sought to act in the present," Mr Armani tells Vogue , almost 50 years later, ahead of his 90th birthday in July. Still in command half a century on, still the head of a now billion-dollar empire (at a recent reliable count he had some 9,257 employees and 2,294 stores in 80 countries), the designer is not and has "never been nostalgic".

His idea of style was defined at the beginning and has remained unchanged. "I believe in consistency, which does not mean rigidity, but adherence to certain principles," he says. "My ultimate goal is to create clothes that celebrate the individual, almost disappearing when worn to allow the wearer's personality to emerge first."

Indeed, by his own measure, the Armani look has only evolved by "millimetric margins". Take the power suiting he was creating in the 1980s, for instance, or the red two-piece worn by Jade Parfitt in the late '90s, then Jourdan Dunn in 2011, in an impeccably tailored jacket and trousers. There are differences, yes, though they are, as the designer says, millimetric. Their provenance is unequivocal.

How did he feel about Corinne Day's picture of Sarah Murray, supermarket checkout girl turned model, representing an anti-fashion moment in Vogue in 1993? Did this portrayal of an Emporio Armani jacket confound him? "On the contrary, it pleases and excites me," he says. "I do not believe in class distinctions in fashion: fashion is truly for everyone, regardless of spending power. This is an image of style: natural and personal." That is, he adds, "exactly how I like it".

Like many who grew up in the shadow of war, it was cinema that offered the young Armani an escape: Italian neorealism, then the glimmering technicolour of Hollywood. With a foresightedness all but then unique in his world, he began to dress the stars themselves in public and, enduringly, on the red carpet. In 1978, Diane Keaton accepted her best actress Oscar for Annie Hall in a neutral-coloured, deconstructed Armani jacket in crumpled linen and a layered skirt. By 1990, so ubiquitous was the label on the red carpet that the Oscars was nicknamed The Armani Awards.