The first stop most fashion people made when they landed in Milan in the 1990s was the Armani boutique on Via Sant’Andrea. It was usually packed with so many editors that it looked like a party in full swing. An invitation to Armani’s runway show and dinner at his house on Via Borgonuovo was so coveted that one was auctioned off at a Robin Hood benefit for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Armani re-invented the trouser suit—first for men, who fancied themselves as the next Richard Gere in American Gigolo, and then for women, who valued their soft, fluid structure. In Working Girl, Melanie Griffith transformed from a secretary to an executive in an Armani suit, making it a symbol of success. It redefined power as something other than broad-shouldered, Wall Street bluster. “A suit,” he once said, “is the uniform of sophistication.”
