Fashion Bios: "When I think about fashion, I think about something intrinsic to my life. When I think about style, I think of it as the only real luxury that anyone can afford to indulge, with or without money. When I think about elegance, I think of how one achieves it only by silencing loud trends.

This is how I've always felt about fashion, not just since my name and labels became well known, but since the day I began my career. I've always had a pragmatic approach, an instinct honed by working from the outset in the world of industrial production and broad distribution. The creativity I love is one that invents credible fashion, clothes that make the men and women who buy them look and feel better, not changing drastically every season but evolving the way the culture does, capturing the current of what's new. It's a creativity that doesn't stoop to the level of the "remake," the costume, the gratuitously peculiar or indecent.

The values that will endure to form the foundation of the new century's fashion are ease, intimacy, expressiveness and, above all, a space for interpretation between those who make fashion and those who wear it. And this is the concept of fashion that has guided and continues to guide my life."

Armani Timeline

1930's - "My mother had a great influence in my life, especially because she managed to be both gentle and strong. She had a great sense of décor, and took great care about her appearance; she was vain, as all women should be; she was open and solicitous, as we would like all our friends to be. With an unflagging respect for others, which has taught me to avoid becoming one of those people who has to have his own way, no matter what."

1940's - "I was a very reasonable youth, perhaps a bit naïve a dreamer. At home the strong figure, capable of being intimidating, was my mother. My father, on the other hand, was very gentle, but also somewhat absent. Piacenza was a little world where we lived, peaceful and protected. The provincial atmosphere of those days is something that is always with me-even when I'm in New York City."

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