The fashion world mourns! Giorgio Armani, king and master of sobriety and elegance, passes away.

Rome.- The sobriety and elegance of the designs of Giorgio Armani, who passed away this Thursday in Milan at the age of 91, made him one of the great names in fashion worldwide. Few created a school like him, so much so that in Italy there is no doubt about how to call him: "Re Giorgio" (King Giorgio). After a life dedicated to his firm, created in 1975 and turned into an empire with more than 350 stores worldwide, Armani (Piacenza, July 11, 1934) never distanced himself from the catwalks, working until the end, even virtually, while he was ill. Always tanned skin and white hair, always dressed in black, with tight t-shirts and, on great occasions, a white shirt, the Italian designer, very active despite his age, lived in a Milanese palace, from which he directed his business and controlled the creation process of his collections.

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A company that led him to be among the richest men on the planet, with a net worth of more than 9 billion dollars. Classic, minimalist, elegant, and simple are the adjectives that best define the style of the designs of the owner and president of the Armani Group, who dressed celebrities from all over the planet, from the biggest movie stars to members of royalty or football teams. The sobriety and lines of men's clothing, also transferred to the female silhouette, made him one of the greats of fashion of all time and marked the aesthetic of the late 20th century. Son of a bourgeois family from Piacenza (Emilia-Romagna, north), Armani moved to Milan to study Medicine, but his fixation with fashion led him to drop out of university in the second year to try his luck in sewing. After a season as a window dresser and purchasing manager for the Milanese department store La Rinascente, he worked for the Cerrutti house for two years and as a freelance designer, until in 1975 he founded his own firm with his friend and partner Sergio Galeotti, who died a decade later. The year his label launched, he presented a first men's collection, with suit jackets freed from their original rigidity, which brought him immediate success, so much so that in 1979 he won the Neiman Marcus award, the Oscar of fashion. Hollywood was also quick to call: in the eighties he triumphed by dressing a young Richard Gere in 'American Gigolo', and his suit-and-t-shirt tandem, still a classic in his collections today, became popular thanks to Don Johnson in the series 'Miami Vice'. Meanwhile, his company continued to take the necessary steps to become an empire, with collaboration agreements with giants like L'Oréal and new store openings in essential enclaves, such as Manhattan, on Madison Avenue (1984), or Paris (1986). In the following decade, its business expansion reached all over the world, including Spain, where it opened its first store in 1998 in Madrid. The Italian house continued to grow and diversify to this day, with collections ranging from Armani Privé to Armani Jeans, the most economical and accessible. Among its most prominent clientele, actors George Clooney, Michelle Pfeiffer and Jodie Foster, singers like Ricky Martin and Lady Gaga, or Charlene of Monaco, on the day of her wedding to Prince Albert. In addition, his close relationship with the world of cinema allowed him to design the costumes for films such as 'The Untouchables' (1987), and for the models of actors such as Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke in 'Gattaca' (1997), Clooney and Pitt in 'Ocean's Thirteen' (2007) or Christian Bale in 'The Dark Knight' (2008). Concerned about the environment and critical of mass consumption and overproduction in the fashion industry, Armani abolished the use of animal furs in his collections in 2016. He made designs for charitable purposes on several occasions and was a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). During the coronavirus pandemic, he donated more than one million euros to combat the emergency and manufactured protective materials for healthcare workers. In his award-winning and long career, he received the awards for best International designer and a lifetime dedicated to men's clothing design, from the Council of Fashion Designers of America, as well as the highest decorations of the Italian Republic: Commander, Grand Officer and Grand Knight.