Remembering the Master of Quiet Luxury
When others screamed in logos, Giorgio Armani sculpted in quiet elegance, proving these exceptional fashion moments worthy of celebration.
Words Randolf Maala-Resueño
Photos courtesy of ARMANI, Official Bespoke, Fashionela, Pinterest
October 19, 2025
In the gallery of fashion history, Giorgio Armani stood tall against the theatrics of many of its contemporaries. Armani is fashion striped to its bones. He bent tailoring into softer lines, and championed shades of stone, sand, and smoke. His clothes did not shout, they breathed. They spoke to a new kind of power—quiet, unforced, and enduring.
By the time he passed in early September, he had shown a fashion language of form, proportion, and restraint that still shapes the way we dress today, whether in a quiet suit, a pared-down coat, or a neutral palette that whispers rather than announces.
Giorgio Armani
To explore Armani’s influence is to explore his philosophies, proving his fashion legacy a manifesto of understatement. And in the arc of these five unforgettable collections and moments, we can trace how Armani clothed cultural attitudes toward luxury, identity, and belonging.
Diane Keaton at the 1978 Academy Awards (“Annie Hall” era look)
During the 50th Academy Awards, Armani dressed Oscar-winning actor Diane Keaton in a beige-tan blazer over a long layered skirt (pleated), white shirt, scarf, and a pink flower broach–a look mixing masculine and feminine codes in a subtle, relaxed way.
Diane Keaton
The look broke with red‐carpet glamorous-centric tradition, as Keaton wore something comfortable, quiet, and elegant. The blazer wasn’t rigid; it had soft tailoring and a loose structure, layering to evoke nonchalance, emphasizing personality over flamboyance.
Praise Diane Keaton’s Glorious Menswear Style
The ensemble looks forward to modern “quiet luxury” and gender fluidity in fashion and showcased everyday tailoring as something luxurious without being ostentatious.
Julia Roberts’ Grey Suit at the 1990 Golden Globes
Julia Roberts in Armani
Julia Roberts wore a gray two‐piece suit during the 47th Golden Globes where she won Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture for her role in Steel Magnolias (1989). The ensemble includes a shirt and tie fit oversize contributing to its slouchy silhouette.
Now an icon for androgynous red‐carpet dressing, Roberts actually bought it off the men’s rack in Armani’s boutique and had it tailored. At a time when gowns were standard, she chose comfort, attitude, and soft power. The suit’s muted tones and relaxed tailoring made it very modern—and still influences gender-neutral suit trends.
It embodies “workwear” in a way—professional, but more personal, less rigid. It also aligns with today’s quiet luxury sensibility: subtle, elevated, but not showy.
Timeless Thoughts: SS2021 and the “New Normal”
Armani4 - OFFICIAL BESPOKE
For SS21, Armani scaled the edge of quiet influence, draping a womenswear collection under the “Timeless Thoughts” theme. It featured soft fabrics, grey and blue neutral tones, relaxed silhouettes, and minimal ornamentation.
A collection that calls for constant evolution, it reinterpreted Armani’s core principles: quiet elegance, comfort, tailoring, and muted palettes. This reverie shows how the quiet luxury works in today, reflecting changes in how people live—remote work, hybrid lifestyles, and a demand for the comfortable yet polished.
In this, Armani ushers in dresses that could be worn casually or more formally; workwear that eases the line between loungewear and office wear. The colours are calming and versatile. Gender neutrality is less explicit, but the soft structure, de-emphasized sexual cues blur lines.
Epitomizing Quiet Luxury in SS24 Menswear
In a focused showcasing of soft, light fabrics, palettes of blues, nudes, sand, and naturals cascade the men of Armani’s Spring Summer 2024 collection–with gleaming lightweight volumes, Asian‐inspired shirt-like jackets, weaving and knot motifs, and stripped down structure with strong tailoring presence.
Poised as Armani redefining quiet luxury, the softness of structure, harmony of palette, with the under‐statement of design all echo calls for comfort, calm, and sustainable elegance in fashion.
This collection is very much in step with modern fashion, muted tones, minimal ornamentation, gender fluidity, and workwear/resortwear crossover, which reveals how Armani’s aesthetic still feels relevant, even rejuvenated, in the quiet luxury sphere.
Armani Privé FW23 Couture: Art Deco meets Elegance
Armani Prive FW23 Fashionela
This Armani Privé haute couture menagerie revisited Far Eastern Art Deco for inspiration, using exquisite craftsmanship—surface decoration, refined silhouettes—and pairing that with his signature understatement. The direction was elegant but restrained, not overbearing.
When excess and drama defined couture, Armani chose to express luxury through detail, decoration, silhouette, texture, not through glitter or overt showiness.
Soft structure, muted decor, restraint—this is luxury for the wearer who understands craftsmanship rather than seeks to advertise it. The couture house also draws from cultural currents filtered through minimalism. It’s aspirational art in fashion; for lifestyles that value exclusivity, artistry, but not shouting.
Quiet luxury lives
It’s been almost a month since his passing, and the world of fashion still feels quieter without him. Giorgio Armani’s absence is a silence that speaks—much like the language of elegance he built across decades.
His legacy is not stitched in spectacle but in subtlety: the drape of a jacket, the calm of muted tones, the confidence found in restraint. Armani taught us that luxury needs to be felt; that it could whisper, and still command the room. As the industry mourns, it also remembers—a man who
