Giorgio Armani

About the house

Giorgio Armani spent the years before his own label dressing shop windows at La Rinascente in Milan, starting in 1957, and designing menswear for Nino Cerruti in the mid-1960s. The company followed on 24 July 1975, founded with Sergio Galeotti. The first collection, menswear for Spring/Summer 1976, was shown that October.

The fragrance line came seven years later, in 1982, and Helena Rubinstein handled its first distribution. L'Oreal now holds the licence for the beauty side. Sources differ on when that arrangement began, and a 2018 renewal runs fragrance, skincare and make-up to 2050. According to FashionNetwork, the licensed lines brought L'Oreal more than 1 billion euros in revenue in 2017.

The Fragrance Foundation inducted Acqua di Gio into its Hall of Fame in 2012, and BeautyMatter calls it one of the top-selling men's fragrances. Sources also disagree on who composed it, with Alberto Morillas and Jacques Cavallier both named. Armani himself said water is the element he feels closest to, a remark BeautyMatter ties to the line. Acqua di Gio Profumo arrived in 2015 with patchouli and incense. BeautyMatter says Si has grown into a powerhouse franchise with multiple iterations.

The house also runs Armani/Prive, which one magazine retelling presents as haute couture in fragrance form, in three universes called the Waters, One Thousand and One Nights, and Les Terres Precieuses. The same piece says Armani works closely with the perfumers on each of them. Armani describes his creations as made to reveal an individual's personality rather than hide it.