While other major names emerged in fashion around the same time as Giorgio Armani, “he made the difference, he was always special,” according to Paola Berti, the journalist who established the fashion desk at Italian news agency ANSA. A contemporary of the late designer from Piacenza, who died on September 4th at 91, Berti covered all his shows until the 2000s.
She vividly remembers his first menswear collection in 1974. “It surprised everyone favorably for how he had brought jackets back to life,” Berti recounts. “But when he came out to take a bow, some turned up their noses because he was wearing a pair of white tennis shoes.”
Describing him as “a bit shy though always very polite,” Berti first met Armani in the early 1970s on a ferry to Capri. He was working for La Rinascente at the time. “I was struck by that young man, my contemporary, all nice and perfect,” she said. Berti refutes notions of arrogance, stating, “He was never an arrogant person, on the contrary, solitary yes, but always available to others, even towards other stylists.” She addressed the perceived rivalry with Gianni Versace and Gianfranco Ferré, suggesting it was more a mutual curiosity about each other’s work.
The following year, in 1975, Berti attended his first womenswear show. “It was extraordinary what he had managed to do with the classic male jacket,” she recalled. “It seemed he had removed its soul, he had so deconstructed it, and yet such a feminine and seductive garment had never been seen before.” Berti admits the woman Armani had in mind was an “eternal adolescent” with a supple body, a small head, narrow hips, and a non-existent bust. “For years, those who had a nice bust couldn’t wear those jackets,” Berti said, recalling that when she mentioned it after a show, he looked at her and said: ‘deflate, you have to deflate.’ “For Sofia Loren, however,” Berti noted, “he worked miracles.”
Berti credits Armani with achieving in 1970s Italy what Kenzo did in Paris the following decade. He marked a turning point, she explained, dealing a “mortal blow to that 1970s fashion that I called ‘giallognola’ (drab, yellowish) – dull, made of beige, yellow, light brown colors…”