Armani at the heart of a new documentary on the birth of Milanese fashion

Giorgio Armani and a slew of fashion CEOs descended on Sunday for the premiere of the documentary “Milano: The Inside Story of Italian Fashion,” by Emmy-winning filmmaker John Maggio.

The documentary pays tribute to Armani for putting Milanese ready-to-wear on the map in the 1980s with the creation of the deconstructed jacket that made menswear sexy and relaxed, as epitomized by Richard Gere in “American Gigolo”.

“Fashion made me grow and become someone. It wasn’t easy at first because I didn’t feel up to it, but little by little I took the courage to want to be someone .into this adventure,” Armani said as he arrived at the premiere.

The 88-year-old designer, who presented his latest womenswear collection earlier today, received huge applause at the start of the film, when producer Alan Friedman introduced him to the fashion-forward crowd as ” the man without whom today Milan would not be the capital of fashion.

The documentary also chronicles the competitive tensions between Armani and its classic elegance and Gianni Versace, who helped fuel the supermodel era with his more overtly sexy collections.

In the documentary, former Gucci creative director Tom Ford and former Gucci CEO Domenico De Sole discuss Gucci and Versace’s attempted mergers, which ultimately failed after Versace was assassinated in 1997 under the insistence of her sister, Donatella Versace, that she remain at the head of creation. .

In the years that followed, Gucci, along with many other Italian family businesses, were taken over by French conglomerates, and Versace became part of the American group Capri Holding. Italy failed to create its own fashion group to challenge French domination; fashion houses like Armani and Dolce & Gabbana are among those that remain firmly in family hands.

The documentary is set to premiere on a streaming service later this year.

This story was originally published February 26, 2023, 6:09 p.m.