About Giorgio Armani
Giorgio Armani is the world’s second largest selling designer (the first is Ralph
Lauren) who sells approx. $ 2 billion per year retail. His products are sold in over 100 countries. He has reached this position because everyone looks fabulous when they wear Armani, they feel so confident, so chic and yet so utterly(visiskai) themselves. It is like magic. He is the magician.
1934 Giorgio Armani was born in Piacanza, Italy, an industrial town about 20 miles south of Milan. He was the son of Marie and Ugo Armani. His father was a transport manager for a shipping company. His mother made all the family’s clothes. The family traces some Austrian ancestry(proteviai).
Armani style
Following the phenomenal success of his menswear, Armani used the elements of masculine tailoring to make feminine garments. Armani understands how to make a suit sexy. He made jackets without stiff linings, opened up the armholes, deleted superfluous buttons and re-figured the proportions. He used soft slinky dress fabrics to make jackets, so lacking in starch(gyvumas) that they could scarcely hold a crease.
Every woman, once she has worn an Armani jacket, is hooked for life.
The design of the Armani jacket is far removed from traditional principles of jacket tailoring. On ordinary jackets, the shoulders fit tightly, the waist is apparent and it hits the breast. His jackets do not do any of these. He makes the shoulder sloping, giving the illusion of a longer neck, the fabric at the collar is pared away, again lengthening the neck, and the whole effect is restrained and languid (bejegis), not at all masculine.
Journalists are always trying to find the right word to describe the colour of an Armani jacket. This is because he uses a dense(tankus) weave of 5 or even 8 strands of different colours, which at a distance merge into a neutral. This can be called beige(smelio spalvos), or stone, pearl, mink, sludge, etc. In addition to jackets, Giorgio Armani also designs trousers, dresses, swimwear, jeans, ski-wear and other garments. In all cases he stresses simplicity, and minimalism. He hardly uses accessories or jewellery in his collections.
His style is the perfect bridge between refined elegance and down-to-earth comfort.
He does not only design for rich women. He has designed the uniforms for the Italian Air Force, waiters in some of the world’s best restaurants as well as Donald Duck’s 60th birthday.
Armani does not use super models to show his clothes, he prefers lesser known beauties which he feels helps the viewer to concentrate on the garments. His clothes have a sense of control and the lack of fuss and clutter(chaosas) make a women feel comfortable.
“Chanel”
Coco Chanel (Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel)
From her first millinery shop, opened in 1912, to the 1920s, Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel rose to become one of the premier fashion designers in Paris, France. Replacing the corset with comfort and casual elegance, her fashion themes included simple suits and dresses, women’s trousers, costume jewelry, perfume and textiles. She claimed a birthdate of 1893 and a birthplace of Auvergne; she was actually born in 1883 in Saumur – her mother worked in the poorhouse where Gabrielle was born, and died when Gabrielle was only six, leaving her father with five children whom he promptly abandoned to the care of relatives. She adopted the name Coco during a brief career as a cafe and concert singers 1905-1908. First a mistress of a wealthy military officer then of an English industrialist, she drew on the resources of these patrons in setting up a millinery shop in Paris in 1910. The two men also helped her find customers among women of society, and her simple hats became popular. In 1922 Chanel introduced a perfume, Chanel No. 5, which became and remained popular, and remains a profitable product of Chanel’s company. The Chanel style was very simple and straightforward. She believed that, “how clothes are worn is much more important than what is worn; that a good line is worth more than a pretty face; that well dressed is not the same as dressy, and that the acme of social cachet(prestizas) was to be proletarian. Youth should not have to declare itself, is should be obvious all the time; in sitting down, getting into a car, walking down the street, stretching out a leg or raising an arm.” Chanel fashion is about ideals rather than outfits. Her fashion is functional and practical that keeps the pace of the contemporary life. Chanel’s designs were firstly to please herself, and secondly to please the people. She transformed wool jersey, which was previously only used to make underwear and made dresses. She launched the “garçon” or “soup kitchen” look “with its flattened bosoms, cropped hair and dresses with dropped waists.”