Gorgeous Giorgio Armani: he defines sex appeal, Italian style

Press, 9 November 1984, Page 10

Gorgeous Giorgio Armani: he defines sex appeal, Italian style

SALLY BRAMPTON,

fashion editor of the ‘‘Observer,” meets the man from Milan who seems destined to be the most influential fashion designer of the eighties.

There are only a handful of designers who can be truly called influential. They may be lionised one season and cold shouldered by the press in another, but their contribution to our broad perception in dress is enduring.

Chanel is the most obvious example and perhaps the best known fashion designer of the twentieth century; but her lasting impact on modern fashion stemmed as much from her real understanding of - women’s needs as from her genius with scissors and needle.

So it is with the best contemporary designers, who are able to appreciate changing social trends and interpret them in their work.

In Milan there is Italian fashion, and there is Giorgio Armani.

A provocative statement and one guaranteed to raise a storm of protest, particularly as it was the designer, Gianfranco Ferre, who was proclaimed the star of the

recent Milanese, showings. “Ferre is fabulous,” shrieked one American lady, overcome with emotion after his sparkling and upbeat show; “There is no one better.”

Fabulous he is, but the Bunteresque figure who stood in the glare of the spotlights and covered his face with his hands like a bewildered child at his own birthday party, has not yet equalled Armani’s contribution to fashion. It was Armani who first took the stuffing out of traditionally masculine tailoring and made it not only acceptable, but desirable when worn by women.

He reshaped the jacket; nipped it in with clever cutting at the waist, reset the collar to emphasise the vulnerable nape of the neck, and moulded the shoulders to flatter the female form.

Armani produces as many as 300 fabrics in each new collection. He is the master of nocolour colour; a jacket which at a distance appears

to be a uniform grey is, on close inspection an intricate weave of different brilliant hues.

He has an instinctive grasp of the sartorial needs of a modern woman. And while the roots of his design may be buried deep in the mens’ wear traditional (with all its practical virtues) his solution is essentially feminine.

Femininity — or, more crudely, sex — was a key issue in the Milan collections. The adrogynous image so popular last March seems to have provoked a few of the designers to go to the opposite extremes. They produced tight skirts and dresses as fitted as a second skin which teetered — on excessively high stiletto heels — on the brink of bad taste.

Those overtly provocative clothes had nothing in common with the real world (or the real women watching them). The only people who seemed to enjoy them were the models, who wriggled their skinny rumps with obscene abandon.

It was therefore a great relief to watch Armani’s latest collection, and his intelligent evaluation of what is truly feminine. “To look sexy,” he maintained after the show, “it is not necessary to wear a skirt split up to the crotch or have your breasts hanging out. “It is sexier to be suggestive, to promise rather than to deliver.” His short skirts curbed gently over the hips without clinging, while his newest jacket was gently ruched at the waist for emphasis.

The padded shoulders on his jackets added yet more definition.

But it was the precious fabrics that he used; the soft silks and satins, the luscious silk tweeds and the teasingly semi-transparent organzas and double layered chiffons that best reflected his move towards a more feminine silhouette.

He has also managed to interpret the fashionable sports wear look, yet deprive it of its athletic, aggressive image. He teamed woven

checked silk T-shirts, with casual pleat-fronted trousers, made in a silk so fine it had the quality of gauzy linen. Though his skirts were short (and his shorts shorter) they were not of the hip- and eye-swivelling variety predominant in many collections.

And while we are on the subject of sex and Armani, it must be said that, like his clothes, he is the object of admiration.

His powerful physique, his bullet head and his ice-chip blue eyes have earned him the nickname “Gorgeous Giorgio” from the excitable American press. He is an intensely private man whose enormous reserve is reputedly only matched by the size of his ego.

He doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t drink and he doesn’t play — he works. The son of a clerk in a trucking company, he has built a million dollar empire in 10 years. He designs 20 collections other than his own, including Erreuno, and controls his organisation with the astute logic of a businessman.

He dislikes the image of the fashion designers as the artist at play, and refuses to

conform or play the elaborate Milanese fashion games. Armani irritates some, angers others, and is rumoured to be the terror of his staff. But he continues to command enormous respect. He keeps his finger firmly on the pulse of reality, and his eye firmly on the street. It is that, combined with his genius as a technician, which makes him great and may, one day, make him legendary.