How the Italian designer transformed tailoring and, with it, the tux.

Some clothes do more than just clothe you. They say something about you, too. Sometimes, they can do that even if you don’t happen to own them… yet. The mere mention of them in conversation can indicate what sort of man you are – or want to be. There can’t be many greater examples of this than a Giorgio Armani tuxedo.

That Giorgio Armani suiting has achieved this aspirational status is somewhat surprising when you consider that the man responsible for it, Mr Giorgio Armani, never had any designs on becoming a fashion designer. Born in 1934, in the small town of Piacenza in northern Italy, instead, he studied medicine at the University of Milan before joining the army. Then, after serving in Verona, he found himself a job dressing windows at the upscale Milanese department store La Rinascente. This move proved to be his making; after being promoted to sales assistant in the menswear department, he joined the Nino Cerruti company as a designer. It wasn’t long before he was persuaded to put his own name on the labels, and in 1975, he set up Giorgio Armani S.p.A. with business and life partner Mr Sergio Galeotti. A year later, he debuted his inaugural men’s collection. It was, to understate the obvious, an immediate success.

In today’s era of unstructured blazers and cropped trousers, it’s all too easy to forget just how significant Mr Armani’s impact on tailoring was. Before he came along, the suit fulfilled its function as a signifier of wealth, class and status, sure, but it was far from, for want of a better word, sexy. That turning point came in 1980, when the then fledgling designer was asked to clothe Mr Richard Gere’s character in Mr Paul Schrader’s neo-noir thriller American Gigolo. 

Instead of buttoned-up jackets and starched shirts, Mr Armani reintroduced US audiences to Italian tailoring by dressing Mr Gere’s Julian Kaye in louche, languid tailoring with longer lines and leaner lapels that fitted like a second, slinky skin. A relaxed cross between the 1940s zoot suit and the 1960s incarnation of the sack suit – it was a dramatic deviation from the sea of structured suiting you’d find at Brooks Brothers at the time and affected its wearer with the same swagger as a biker jacket. It was self-conscious, yet unstudied. Considered, but carefree. And, thanks to the unprecedented lack of padded shoulders, considerably more comfortable than anything else available at the time. “I design for real people,” Mr Armani once said of this pragmatic approach to smart-casual style. “There is no virtue whatsoever in creating clothing or accessories that are not practical.” America, unsurprisingly, sat up and took notice: from then on, they knew him as “king of the blazer”.

It turned out to be the first of many nicknames Mr Armani would earn himself. As well as being credited with reformulating smart-causal style, he’s also lauded for inventing red-carpet dressing as we know it. Just as he had done for the blazer, Mr Armani knocked the stuffing out of the tuxedo, creating a thoroughly modern class of eveningwear for Hollywood legends such as Messrs Al Pacino, George Clooney, Tom Cruise and Leonardo DiCaprio during the 1980s and 1990s. This is not to say that his creations weren’t formal; these were tuxes every inch as smart as the black-tie dress code required. Classic black, with confident peak lapels, it was their considerate cuts, nonchalant silhouettes and finer fabrics that cut an effortless dash in comparison to the strait-laced penguins beside them. It’s this carefree quality that kept La La Land’s brightest stars coming back for more: according to an analysis by the Los Angeles Times, the Italian designer is responsible for clothing 38 per cent of Best Actor and 33 per cent of Best Supporting Actor Oscar winners since 1996, and that’s not including the guys who didn’t take home a statue.

The reverence for Giorgio Armani’s eveningwear offering hasn’t waned over the years. Nor has its popularity. Today, everyone from Mr Armie Hammer to Mr Darren Criss stalk the red carpet in his designs. In fact, it was the Call Me By Your Name actor’s burgundy number (which he graced the 2018 Academy Awards in) that came to mind when we first chanced a glance at the exclusive eveningwear capsule the label has created especially for us, and which is now available only at MR PORTER. 

Inspired by the opulence and elegance of the Thursday night members-only evenings at the Armani/Privé hotel and club (yes, that’s right, Mr Armani can also add “hotelier” to his extensive résumé), this made-in-Italy collection features a rich velvet smoking jacket with neat notch lapels uncannily reminiscent of Mr Hammer’s blockbuster ensemble. An Armani mainstay, velvet is evocative of old-world elegance and tinsel town glamour. You’ll find a little goes a long way, too. Here, it’s accompanied by a pair of excellently tailored black wool dress trousers with a traditional satin side stripe and a pleated shirt made of smooth silk – a luxurious alternative to crisp cotton. Timeless, but still timely, it’s a winning look by anybody’s standards.

Another highlight of the lavish collection is a moody navy dinner jacket, woven in a subtly textured jacquard – another Giorgio Armani signature. Navy or midnight blue is often favoured by red-carpet attendees who expect to be snapped as it tends to photograph under harsh lighting better than black, while a patterned or textured jacket is a raffish alternative to conventional wool or barathea that’ll single you out from the waddling masses. This peak-lapelled iteration is woven with silk so you can be certain it’ll appear lustrous under the fluorescent aura of flashbulbs or, indeed, any kind of light. 

And then there’s the classic black tuxedo, in supple virgin wool. Assured satin peak lapels, a neatly tapered torso and gently structured shoulders, this is the sort of tux that lasts a lifetime, or longer. “I love things that age well,” as Mr Armani himself once said. “Things that don't date, that stand the test of time and that become living examples of the absolute best.”