Armani/Silos is a living, open-to-the-public space that illustrates Giorgio Armani’s professional experience by offering an overview of the designer’s career via some of his most memorable works, revealing a rich heritage of unique know-how: a space in which to design the future while capturing the changing times, lifestyles and cultures.

On April 30th, 2015 Giorgio Armani opened Armani/Silos in Milan’s Via Bergognone 40 to mark the 40 years of his career.

Over forty years ago Giorgio Armani created a new fashion identity defying the passing of time with subtle shades, smooth fabrics, and deconstructed jackets. He established a thin line between masculine and feminine, between rigor and indulgence, where the secret of modern seduction is unveiled.

At Armani/Silos, Giorgio Armani shows a glimpse of his world: the dream of a measured, timeless aesthetic approach that has changed not only our way of dressing, but also our way of thinking.

Built in 1950 for storing cereals, today this ample 4500 square-meter space spread over four floors houses a unique selection of the fashion designer’s creations, divided into themes that tell the story behind their aesthetics and their history.

The search for simplicity, eliminating unnecessary ornamentation and everything that is superfluous, coupled with a preference for regular geometric shapes and a desire or uniformity.

With these ideas in mind, Armani designed a sober yet monumental building based on the rule of order and rigor: a rational response to practical needs, with spaces demonstrating respect for the original architecture. By preserving the building’s unusual established form, recalling a beehive, a metaphor for industriousness, the renovation of the exhibition space reinforces the designer’s aesthetic philosophy and creative dynamism.

The space includes not only the exhibition areas but also a gift shop and an open-plan indoor coffee shop, as well as housing a digital archive.

“I decided to call it silos because this building used to store food, which is, of course, essential for life. for me, just as much as food, clothes are also a part of life.”

Giorgio Armani

“Setting up Armani/Silos, deciding what to exhibit and how, focusing on the themes that best represent a way of thinking and a style – all this helped me look back on my 40-year career in a passionate but balanced way. Because fashion, which seems to want to live in an eternal present, needs to reflect on itself and its own roots in order to face the future. Through this process of reflection, we see how fashion accompanies and often anticipates important social changes. Remembering what we were like in the past can help us understand what we might be in the future.”

The exhibition permanently on display at Armani/Silos celebrates over 40 years of timeless elegance and style. A unique selection of the fashion designer’s creations from 1980 up until today, divided into themes that have inspired and continue to inspire Giorgio Armani’s creative work: the androgynous style, far away ethnicities and Hollywood stars.

ETHNICITIES COLLECTION: Africa, China, Japan, Persia, Arabia, Syria, and Polynesia are some of the places that have inspired the designer to create this collection.

In my quest to discover pure fashion – ensembles that have both the timeless perfection of the archetype and the kind of absolute elegance that transcends history – I have always felt an intuitive affinity with distant cultures. There is a special sort of allure in the traditional costumes worn by different peoples, in their distinctive decoration and line, in their richness of color, and in their unique wearability.

There’s also poetry in them, at least to my eyes, as someone who travels in his imagination, someone who fantasies, letting himself be transported on the waves of thinking and style. I avoid merely copying traditional forms, styles, and decorations, preferring instead to explore a reinterpretation that is both decisive and nuanced. This is my personal idea of exoticism: imagining and reinterpreting an “elsewhere,” capturing its purity, its capacity to move the soul,” says Giorgio Armani.

Armani/Silos offers an overview of over 40 years of the designer’s career, including 400 outfits and 200 accessories from Giorgio Armani’s ready-to-wear collections from 1980 to the present.

ANDROGYNOUS COLLECTION: “I find the androgynous style full of mysterious, seductive fascination.”

“My style has always blended masculine and feminine. I think women wearing clothes with a masculine cut are particularly intriguing,”

Armani

As simple, pure and clean-cut as possible: this is what fashion means to Giorgio Armani. In his thorough exploration of the jacket, which is a must-have everyday item, Armani reinterprets the original concepts of androgyny, yet stays true to a style that conveys understated, discreet femininity and elegance.

Renowned for his neutral colors and his reinterpretations of traditional male fabrics, Armani loves to blend rigorous male tailoring and soft female dressmaking elements that give life to a wardrobe designed with an unprecedented fluidity.

Over the years, Giorgio Armani’s suit has evolved but it has essentially remained true to the original. “My style has always blended masculine and feminine. I think women wearing clothes with a masculine cut are particularly intriguing,” states Armani.

STARS COLLECTION: There is a strong bond between Giorgio Armani and cinema. Male and female celebrities alike have decided to wear his clothes, both on screen and on the red carpet, and over time have become friends.

“Oscars night, preceded by the red carpet, has always been a magical moment for me: because I love cinema and have a privileged relationship with Hollywood.

When I started to dress the Hollywood stars it was a major moment of change. The actors were willing to wear clothes that would enhance them without disguising them, and it was the exact type of revolution that fitted with the one I was engaged in with my clothes. It was a conversation that originated in a very easy and genuine way.

And to this day, cinema stars still find that my style allows them to express themselves naturally and emphasize their personalities.”

“Photography has always fascinated me because the emotion it inspires is very similar to the sense of surprise felt when observing reality from an unexpected point of view. In particular, I admire the work of the Magnum photographers, which I got to know when I myself began to see the world with new eyes. Colors, Places, Faces takes us on a colorful journey through worlds and cultures near and far, transfigured by each of the artists, through their own personal vision. It is the attention to reality that fascinates me about their photographs, which are never simple reportages and are all so different from each other.”

Giorgio Armani

With the Digital Archive project, Giorgio Armani opens his personal archive to the wider public, giving visitors access to a vast and continuously evolving resource that reveals the designer’s creative process, working methods and aesthetic approach.

The archive contains approximately 1,000 outfits categorized by seasons and collections, and images of 2,000 garments and accessories, as well as numerous sketches, fashion show and backstage videos, images taken from the Emporio Armani Magazine and iconic advertising photos.

Armani/Silos is a work-in-progress resource, a workshop in which nothing is permanent, and which will be continuously enriched with new materials.

In contemporary fashion culture, archives reveal the creative process: they are places filled with wonder – initiatives to stimulate research, and which provide opportunities for representing and reviewing the past and its important moments, in order to help create the future. With the Digital Archive project, Giorgio Armani opens his personal archive to the wider public, giving access to a vast source of ideas and enabling visitors to reconstruct all the phases of the designer’s creative process and working methods, thus illustrating his aesthetic approach.