ARMANI /Archivio
To mark the 50th anniversary of GIORGIO ARMANI in 2025, ARMANI/Archivio was conceived as a platform designed to preserve the brand’s heritage as a symbiosis of tradition and innovation.
Now, for the first time, thirteen women’s and men’s looks from the Giorgio Armani collections spanning the years 1979 to 1994 have been faithfully reproduced. Nine of these looks are available exclusively at APROPOS in Berlin. The selection focuses on the jacket in the styles designed by Giorgio Armani and bridges the gap between the past and the future. It offers the new generation the opportunity to rediscover the essence of the brand under the motto “Past Perfect. Future Ready.”
Photographer Eli Russell Linnetz drew on earlier Giorgio Armani imagery as a reference for this unique campaign. Particular emphasis was placed on capturing looks in motion to illustrate the guiding principle behind Giorgio Armani’s revolutionary creations: the natural way in which clothing and the body engage in dialogue.
SPRING/SUMMER & FALL/WINTER 1979
From the 1997 Spring/Summer collection, a pinstripe ensemble and a look featuring a leather jacket and tie were selected in particular. The pinstripe look featured in Vogue established the ARMANI suit as an international benchmark: precise, minimalist and characterised by understated elegance.
The selection is complemented by a reissue of a style from the Autumn/Winter 1979 collection, which reinterprets the feminine silhouette between structure and softness and reveals an early design approach: the suit is draped, lending it a flowing, dynamic elegance through asymmetry and fluid movement.
FALL/WINTER 1981
A look was selected from the 1981 Spring/Summer collection that marks a shift in tailoring towards softer, more natural silhouettes – achieved, among other things, through patterns and the early appearance of the GA eagle logo as a new brand symbol.
The jacket is a reissue of a model from the Autumn/Winter collection and embodies a precise, structured aesthetic with a double-breasted cut, accentuated shoulders and a tailored fit, as documented in various campaigns – including in Vogue. The collection itself is inspired by Japanese design language and translates its clarity and structure into a Western, modern elegance.
SPRING/SUMMER 1983
Featured in US Vogue in 1983, the combination of a bomber jacket, skirt and shirt conveys a vision of understated and enduring femininity. The focus is on proportions and functionality: garments designed for daytime wear that translate tailoring into an essential design language, in which balance and formal clarity define a restrained and contemporary elegance.
SPRING/SUMMER & FALL/WINTER 1990
The Spring/Summer 1990 collection brought together cultural and geographical influences within a controlled, contemporary visual language. Inspired by the poetics of Léon Bakst and cinematic references such as the costumes in *The Iron Crown* (1941), it created a tension between history, myth and modern sensibility. The leather jacket paired with a skirt and blouse represented a significant moment in the development of a sophisticated and self-assured image of womanhood.
Also reissued is the double-breasted jacket, part of a four-piece ensemble. A look that encapsulates the new concept of ‘Armani’ elegance: freer, more natural and unbound by the constraints of classical tailoring. The model was photographed by Aldo Fallai for the Spring/Summer campaign of the time and later included in the Guggenheim exhibition of 2000–2001, as evidence of its iconic and cultural value within the brand’s creative history. The design reflects one of Giorgio Armani’s fundamental principles: deconstruction, understood as a loosening of the traditional structure of tailoring to create space for a more natural, fluid and body-hugging fit.
Another reissue comes from the Autumn/Winter collection of 1990 and evokes the elegance of the 1930s, reinterpreted through the design language of the ‘sack suit’: a soft, less rigid cut with natural, unpadded shoulders and a silhouette that tapers downwards, eventually narrowing slightly at the waist.
Whilst the men’s look featured unpadded shoulders, Armani deliberately used shoulder pads as a stylistic device in the women’s collection to create a structured yet slender silhouette. In the Autumn/Winter 1990 collection, cultural references were intertwined with tailoring. The jacket was reimagined in terms of its proportions and role, entering into a dialogue with masculine elements and more suggestive allusions, whilst maintaining a constant balance between the everyday and the ceremonial. This look, featured in Aldo Fallai’s photographs for the Autumn/Winter 1990 campaign, represents a significant moment in the definition of a new concept of feminine elegance. In this concept, structure and grace coexist naturally.
Discover a selection of looks from the collection from 21 May at APROPOS Berlin.
APROPOS BERLIN
Kurfürstendamm 68 | Berlin
Monday - Saturday
11 am to 7 pm