A few days after the death of fashion legend Giorgio Armani, I sat in the chair of my longtime friend and hairdresser, Emilio Cornacchione. As if flipping through the photo album of a recently deceased loved one, we nostalgically named Armani pieces from our past. My favorite: black, bugle-beaded palazzo pants scavenged from a consignment shop in Brooklyn when I was 25. Emilio rattled off half a dozen 1990s-era suits he still wears. “I was doing a lot of onstage education,” he said. “Armani suits gave me power.”
Everyone loved Armani. He was featured on the cover of TIME magazine (April 5, 1982), name-checked in hip-hop songs, and adored by celebrities, scholars, fashion editors (who dubbed him “King Giorgio”), and museums around the world.
