EMPORIO ARMANI

Milan, late 1970s. The kingdom of fashion crowns its king: King George, as he is respectfully called abroad. Together with Giorgio Armani, Milan is set to become the capital of fashion, and Made in Italy no longer remains just a label: it becomes synonymous with elegance, sophistication, class. Giorgio Armani was born in 1934 in Piacenza, Italy. After dropping out of medical school in Milan, he began working with the architects of La Rinascente to curate the image of the prestigious department store. Inside its glittering spaces, the future designer's creative skills and penchant for aesthetics matured, making the future that awaited him clearer. He landed in clothing design shortly thereafter, in 1964, thanks to a successful collaboration with Cerruti for Hitman, a brand producing men's clothing. This first assignment in the fashion world, which lasted until 1970, was his most important formative experience. So important that just five years later, in 1975, Giorgio Armani Spa, an independent fashion house producing men's and, since 1976, women's clothing, was founded. Everything else is history: from the Armani suit worn by Diane Keaton to collect her 1978 Oscar to those made for Richard Gere in the 1980 film American Gigolo. His admirers include Madonna, Lady Gaga, Laura Pausini, Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Leonardo Di Caprio, Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Renée Zellweger. Impossible to list them all. Let's move on to the idea of Emporio Armani. It is the early 1980s, Giorgio Armani wants to broaden his audience by targeting younger people and pandering to all budgets. Thus a cheaper clothing line was born. The central garment of the new proposal is denim. Discounted today, a little less so then: no designer had ever included a pair of jeans in his collection. The choice sounds revolutionary and is criticized by the most conservative. What is certain is that it is welcomed by his future, and very numerous, customers with enormous enthusiasm: Emporio Armani proposes collections that are easily wearable, understated, elegant, and affordable. A revolution! Why the name "Emporio" at all? And why the eagle in the logo? Let's start with the brand name. It was Giorgio Armani himself who wanted the word emporio in the name of the new line. He liked the idea of a place where you could find everything and at a fair price. That idea is still valid today: Emporio is a container of garments, accessories and ideas, intended for a cross-cultural, cosmopolitan and metropolitan audience. An eagle with the body divided into horizontal stripes that contains the designer's initials. The font chosen is Didot LT, a very elegant serif. Why the eagle in particular? Legend has it that the symbol is a tribute to its main trading partner: the United States. Yet the eagle is looking in the wrong direction, toward the east. A detail that makes us think that this is just an unfounded urban legend. A logo born without study or design, then, that sums up the brand's identity so well. Denim, at the time, was the central part of the offering. No designer, before then, had ever thought of doing that. And it worked. Those, after all, were the years of the paninari, San Babila was their epicenter, on Saturday afternoons those streets became a crossroads of young people for whom jeans and logoed shirts were the items to have, period. Not owning them meant being out of the group.