Interview with Giorgio Armani
Posted by Alain Elkann on 27/04/2016
Giorgio Armani is in good spirits, wearing long dark blue Bermuda shorts and a dark brown T-shirt.
Giorgio Armani is in good spirits, wearing long dark blue Bermuda shorts and a dark brown T-shirt. He is tanned and resting at his home on the island of Pantelleria, an oasis of true luxury, very quiet and with a light breeze. It’s seven o’clock in the evening and, in the shade of old palm trees that the designer bought into his property from an aristocratic Sicilian family, it is time for tea and biscuits purchased at a local pasticceria. We are situated on a bluff, you can see the sea, and at about half past nine we will dine at another spot on the property, which is made up of lots of houses joined together by small paths that are lit after sunset by very many candles in simple black lanterns.
Giorgio Armani, this is the umpteenth August you are spending on Pantelleria. What is the reason for your thirty years of loyalty?
I’m a creature of habit. I love rediscovering what I have started, and here in this place I have started a great deal. At first glance it seemed to be a difficult island: I had always imagined an island as a place with white beaches and instead this is one big rock. My first impression was not one of easy living and there was nothing that was particularly attractive about this place. In those years everyone talked about going to Saint-Tropez, where you could mingle with the jet set people or go dancing at balls. Here, however, there was not even electric light.
But you have stuck with it?
Yes, the island has maintained its fascination, but nowadays it also has new facilities. The promontory where we are now is very beautiful and Sergio Galeotti and I decided we would make a home for ourselves here. From year to year I have added something: first of all I created the space where the swimming pool is, then this oasis with the palm trees and then the other houses.
What is it about this place, is it the great bathing, the great relaxing?
Every year I come here with many friends … I could show you a history of twenty-five years through photographs of the summers. The place itself does not alter, it is the people who change. I have tried to show the greatest respect to the nature of the place. I have dispensed with designer objects and there are just a few pieces I bought in the markets of Morocco. The colours are my quintessential grayscale, beige. As if they were made up of bright colours, strong and then filtered through nature, the sun, the wind. Then this house is a bit like a large boat, everyone has their independence, but there are certain rites to be followed, like there are on a boat. Before sunset candles are lit everywhere. Everything is well organised and the guests light candles everywhere. Everything is on schedule and my guests are familiar with some basic rules. For example, breakfast is taken in the morning with everybody together between the hours of nine and ten o’clock. In Milan I mostly see work colleagues while here I feel free to let myself go, even to become rather romantic; I like to open up here, I like to hear other people tell their own nostalgic stories. In the city you cannot do this, there’s not enough time.
What kinds of relationships do you have with your friends?
I am demanding and possessive. I give a great deal to my friends and I like to receive their loyalty and empathy in return. I do not want to exchange material things, I’ve been blessed by good fortune and that is not what matters. I want there to be a sense of understanding, in short what I really enjoy is that they make me an absolute priority. Spend twenty days with Armani and don’t go anywhere else. Armani wants you and you must come!
And who are those who you want?
First of all my family members, for instance my sister Rosanna, my nieces Silvana and Roberta and my nephew Andrea and their chums, as well my sister Rosanna’s little dog. Then there are the people I work with, like Leo and Graham and others. I have chosen to live without surprises. It is as if there is a love affair that becomes reinforced. I do not like playboy holidays where one goes in hope of adventure. Here we do not stay up too late at night because it is a crime to lose any hours from the coming day.
Do you have lots of people around so that you don’t get lonely?
No, because when I am alone it affords me long moments of contemplation. I think that to be alone means to think about all the good things that one has, about how the day is coming when none of this will any longer be ours. Life passes, mine is a life dedicated to my work, which I have confused with real life. My luxury is to say what I think. It is according to my own taste to discard a paradigm that does not fit into the world of Armani. And in the same way to discard whatever it may be that I do not like to have in my life.
What is about today’s world that strikes you?
Today what is considered desirable has become so because it has been proposed by the media. And furthermore fashion also suffers, at the moment when you put a bag with a dress that has nothing to do with it. Fashion must go hand in hand with being right minded, that’s what counts, and I am looking for poise and composure, equilibrium, both in material things and also in relationships.
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