GIORGIO ARMANI opens the button on the cuff of his navy cashmere jacket and loosens the brown alligator strap of his limited-edition white gold Borgo 21 watch. It’s a muggy day in Paris and, as he watches final rehearsals for his haute-couture womenswear show, the Italian designer is feeling the heat.
The stakes in the couture business are high. Persuading a dwindling coterie of customers to part with £50,000 for a back-baring cocktail jacket in Chantilly lace with spilling black mink and Swarovski crystal butterfly buttons is tough at the best of times. But, for the Italian designer, flogging togs to toffs is about to get tougher.
Next month he will take fashion into uncharted territory by becoming the first designer to launch couture for men. “Men need couture just as women do — something made exclusively for them to define their social position,” he said.
The move is a direct challenge to the traditional home of men’s bespoke tailoring, Savile Row, which Armani dismisses as “a bad English comedy”.
Armani’s Fatto A Mano Su Misura (hand-made to measure) service, which will be launched in London and Milan before spreading to New York, Tokyo and Los Angeles, will give men the chance to create their own individual Armani suit. Customers will be measured up by Armani tailors and choose their own fabric, silhouette, lapel, vents, pockets, trouser pleats, buttons and lining.
Each suit will be hand-made in Armani’s new men’s studio in Milan and hand-fitted either there or in one of his select Giorgio Armani boutiques. No man will choose an identical combination of fabric, silhouette and detail, so no two suits will be the same. The label of each will be signed by Armani and bear the customer’s name.
The starting price will be about £5,000, but could rise to £30,000. “If the customer wants a particularly luxurious, rare fabric, say a double cashmere with a particular wash, and a specially dyed silk lining, he can have it — provided he can afford it,” said Armani.
Customers will also be able to order hand-made shirts and ties and bespoke gold, crystal and sapphire cufflinks. There will be customised watches and aftershaves, made from Madagascan pepper, bergamot, Virginia cedar and bourbon vanilla.
The accessories are part of the Privé range, which Armani has previously used only to make gifts for his friends.
“I want to create a complete ‘haute’ service for men,” he said. A single outfit, with all the trimmings, could cost as much as £75,000.
The decision to take menswear to a new level of luxury — and price — is a double-breasted gamble. No designer, let alone a mainstream, ready-to-wear designer who makes cheaper jeans and T-shirts as Armani does with his fast- fashion A/X collection, has ever dared to create a new men’s haute-couture sector, comprising clothes and accessories. Conventional fashion wisdom says only women are prepared to drop tens of thousands of pounds on a single garment with matching shoes, bags and jewellery.
Moreover, Armani has made his name and built a £1.5 billion global empire by ripping the stuffing — literally — out of tailoring and introducing looser-fitting, but still flattering, jackets and trousers. His new haute-couture line will offer a more structured, formal look, which risks confusing customers who admire his trademark slouchy chic.
Speaking at his show last week, Armani said his move was “revolutionary” but added the time was right to be bold. “I have always been a modernist and an innovator. In the 1970s it was right to rebel against the formality of tailoring, to get rid of that antique way that men used to dress and replace it with something more modern.
“Now it’s time to embrace formality again but to do it in a new way with new, modern fabrics — to bring the traditional and the modern together, combining the origins of the tailor’s craft with the innovations of a contemporary design studio.”
He insists men will part with a small fortune on a single outfit. “In these times of big fashion corporations, globalisation and brands run by accountants, there are many men for whom true luxury is individuality — to have something so personal that no-one else can have it.
“A bespoke Armani suit goes with a limited-edition watch, a vintage Maserati or a house on the Costa Smeralda in Sardinia.”
Actors and celebrities, including George Clooney, Samuel L Jackson and David Beckham, have all requested hand-made Armani suits, shirts and ties. Beckham personally chose the shade of blue of the tie that he and the rest of the England squad wore for the World Cup.
The new breed of the super-wealthy are also clamouring for a personalised wardrobe. “Some men are snobs,” Armani said.
“There is a certain client that refuses to lower himself to going into a store and picking something off a rack. It could be a young Russian billionaire, you know like Roman Abramovitch. He is perfect for Giorgio Armani hand-made to measure.”
Armani has his sights fixed firmly on London — and not just because it’s where most of the world’s new razzle-dazzle billionaires live. After years of doffing his designer cap to the traditions of Savile Row, he wants to use his new men’s couture line to knock the home of bespoke tailoring off its cashmere-covered pedestal.
He dismisses Savile Row as an outdated institution that has failed to keep up with modern tastes, lifestyle and technology. “Savile Row is a comedy, a melodrama lost in the past. It’s so old it should be in black and white,” he said.
“When I think of Savile Row I picture a man in an old black and white English film. He is living in the country. He has a butler. He smokes a cigar sitting in an old-fashioned Prince of Wales check suit.”
He lampoons English tailors as men “of limited mentality ... who make clothes for the children of lords. They have a restricted idea of how a suit is made. The suit can only be made in this shape, with these fabrics. It has to be a certain way and they don’t go beyond that.
“They don’t research or develop something or innovate. There is no room in their head to expand into something new. They do not think of half the things that I take into consideration when I think of a hand-made to measure suit.”
Armani believes younger, international customers are turning their backs on Savile Row and towards modern couture.
“Younger clients want a made-to-measure suit but they are not so keen on all the old traditions. They have different concerns. They want to know not just how a suit looks when they first put it on but how it moves, how it sheens, how it hangs, how easy it is to travel in, whether it looks as good with sneakers as it does with a pair of hand-made shoes.”
He insists he can exploit his knowledge of sportswear and even womenswear to create the best modern bespoke suits and shirts for men. “I have been in the market for 35 years doing tailoring, womenswear, sportswear. Often, I will find technology for a man’s bespoke suit that has its origins in sportswear. Or I find a fabric from women’s ready-to-wear, say a crepe, that I can use to create a unique suit for the right man. Savile Row would never do that.”
In the rarefied world of bespoke tailoring, designer dog rarely bites designer dog but Armani’s bid to stitch up Savile Row has drawn a sharp response from the home of English fine tailoring.
Mark Henderson is chief executive of Gieves & Hawkes, which with its royal warrant sits proudly at No 1 Savile Row. It has dressed the Duke of Wellington, Lord Nelson and Captain Bligh.
Savile Row, Henderson said last week, has little to learn from a Giorgio-foreigner-come-lately who made his name flogging shapeless sacks to naff 1980s rock stars such as Duran Duran.
“I’m astonished by Armani’s comments. Clearly, he doesn’t get out much any more. Savile Row is far from history. Today it stands for exemplary standards of luxury in men’s tailoring.
“Gieves & Hawkes, Ozwald Boateng, Richard James — they combine craftsmanship and technology, creating the most contemporary and considered menswear in the world today. Our customers don’t want the baggy, drapy suits of the 1980s.”
Henderson reminded Armani that leading new designers, such as Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney, trained on Savile Row. “It is disrespectful of Armani to dismiss Savile Row’s contribution to modern fashion. I invite Armani to come to Savile Row any time and see for himself the energy and activity in our workrooms. He would learn something. Armani has been successful for a few decades, Savile Row for two centuries.”
Henderson may sound bullish but to make doubly sure that Savile Row does not lose out to the Italian interloper he and other leading tailors have come together to draw up strict new rules on what makes a “couture” Savile Row suit. The Savile Row Bespoke Code is based on the rules compiled by France’s Fédération de la Couture which specifies how many seamstresses — nicknamed “petit mains” — have to work on a dress before it can qualify as haute couture.
The new code says that only suits that are hand-made and finished to the last stitch for at least 60 hours over six to eight weeks in one place can count as a couture Savile Row suit. Gieves & Hawkes and the other big names on the Row hope the new rules will convince consumers that London is a cut above Milan.
As he takes a bow and acknowledges the applause of the billionaire ladies who lunch in Paris, Armani is unmoved by the latest moves in Mayfair. “They can say what they like. Savile Row is not prestigious any more.”
He is so confident Via Borgonuovo in Milan, where he lives and designs, will become the new Savile Row, he said he was planning to become the first designer to do a men’s couture catwalk show during next year’s Milan menswear fashion week. “It is very early days, but maybe we will start to do the finale of the Giorgio show with men’s couture. Let’s see what Savile Row has to say about that.”
End of the line
THE launch of men’s couture is the final chapter in the 30-year story of Armani clothing. After creating dozens of ‘brands within a brand’, the Armani label now covers everything from high-street fast fashion — A/X and Armani Jeans — through the middle market — Emporio Armani and Armani Collezioni — to haute couture for men and women.
Armani said: ‘Couture closes the circle on our unique, multi-brand approach and on the Armani world. I have invented an entire story. The story is complete.’
