One, none, a hundred Armanis: a multifaceted portrait of the designer in a book

A successful and captivating literary device – though, one might say, an unintended one – which has lent shape and originality to the biography *Giorgio secondo Armani*, recently published by Marsilio and written by Roberta Filippini, who served as a fashion editor at ANSA for decades.

The book’s nearly 400 pages weave together dozens of temporal and literary strands, all of which, however, revolve around two specific dates: the first is 2014, when the fashion designer and entrepreneur, then aged 80, asked Roberta Filippini to work on a biography recounting his life and the history of the company he had founded. The second point on the timeline to which the narrative continually returns is the year just gone.

Giorgio Armani died a year ago, on 4 September 2025, and just five days later his will was opened (see also the article on this page). The author explains what has happened between 2014 and now: ‘After about twenty meetings, which evolved week by week from a process of listening, recording and then transcribing into most amiable chats, I prepared a draft and had Armani read it. But he changed his mind about publication, preferring not to set his first 80 years in stone in a book. I believe he did not want to give the impression of entering a different phase of his life: he aspired to remain firmly at the creative and managerial helm of his company for all the years he had left to live.”

That is exactly how it happened: Giorgio Armani passed away whilst serving as creative director, chief executive and chairman of the company he had founded with Sergio Galeotti by means of a notarial deed dated 24 July 1975. It is worth noting that he was therefore able to celebrate almost the entire year in which the 50th anniversary of his ‘creation’ was marked. He even managed to organise virtually the entire spring–summer 2026 fashion show, which took place on 28 September 2025 at the Brera Academy and which transformed the melancholy and sense of emptiness felt by those who knew him, worked for him or admired him, into a celebration and an invitation to remember his passions, dedication and achievements. Roberta Filippini weaves together the story of Armani’s childhood, adolescence and subsequent adulthood and maturity with the key milestones in the company’s growth, which closed 2025 with a turnover of 2.2 billion, a figure that rises to over 6 billion when the retail value of Armani-branded products sold worldwide is taken into account, including those resulting from licensing agreements.

‘He was a pioneer in everything, perhaps because he never considered himself satisfied, having made it, or fully realised: once the anxiety about a fashion show had passed – which he told me he had felt right up until the very last show he attended, in February 2025 – once a shop opening had been celebrated, once an event had finished, Armani would already be looking ahead to the next ones,’ emphasises Roberta Filippini. ‘It was only when he died, and I put forward the book project we’d worked on in 2014 to his family and heirs, that I realised his reluctance to stop the narrative at the age of 80. He often said two things that were only seemingly contradictory: on the one hand, he would have liked to have achieved success sooner; ideally, he would have cut short the work experiences he’d had between the late 1960s and 1975, when he founded the brand and the company. On the other hand, he dreamt of being ‘granted ten more years’. And furthermore: he knew he was a ‘monk of fashion’, having devoted every day of 50 years of his life to work. He enjoyed himself, of course, but this inevitably took time away from his loved ones. I cannot say that Giorgio Armani had any real regrets, but he was certainly able, right up to the very end, to look with clarity and objectivity at both the bright and the darker sides of his life.’