From September 24, 2025, to January 11, 2026, the exhibition &quot;Giorgio Armani: Milano, per Amore&quot; will pay tribute to the career of the great designer and entrepreneur, who passed away in early September. To conclude the tribute, a fashion show will celebrate his aesthetic legacy and his enduring bond with the city.

Giorgio Armani's aesthetic universe took shape long before the runways, amid the colours of the sea, provincial theatre, the charm of his brother Sergio-"beautiful" in the designer's memories&mdash;and his fascination with cinema. Those childhood images, abruptly interrupted by the war when he was just eight years old, remained the nostalgic matrix that would resurface in his sketches throughout his life. When, as an adult, Armani spoke of his collections, he admitted they reflected that inner world of essential lines and silences. Then came Milan. The city that in the 1950s and 1960s was rebuilding from the rubble, and which became the permanent laboratory of his adventure. First La Rinascente, then the experience at Cerruti. It was here that, with Sergio Galeotti, the man who was both his great love and his entrepreneurial ally, he founded Giorgio Armani SpA in 1975, born of their shared creativity and determination, with the precise ambition of reinventing Italian fashion in a city crying out for modernity. Those who knew him over the years with Galeotti remember a complementary pair.

Armani's meticulous shyness was balanced by his partner's voracious energy. While the designer was shy and inflexible in the face of "no," Galeotti had the economic acumen that transformed an idea into one of the industry's giants. For Giorgio Armani, fashion represented an almost paradoxical combination of "imagination and concreteness, intuition and rigour, momentum and control." Not absolute art, not mere decoration, nor simple theatre. Rather, it was a restless hybrid, suspended between imagination and industrial production. Armani and Sergio Galeotti knew how to tame fashion- that enigmatic and unpredictable beast that often devours its creators- and, after Galeotti's untimely death, Armani, supported by Leo Dell'Orco and his family, succeeded, against all scepticism, in leading the company to its current heights. However, he paid, as he himself acknowledged, a very high personal price. Fashion demanded everything of him, and he, without reservation, delivered it all. Today, Milan celebrates him in the place that best expresses its cultural identity: the Pinacoteca di Brera, an academy and museum that has inspired generations of artists. A symbolic restitution. The city that saw him grow and establish himself now recognises in Armani not only the creator of a style, but an essential part of its own history. The director of the Pinacoteca di Brera, Angelo Crespi, retraces the genesis of the exhibition, its curatorial architecture, and the celebration of beauty that emerges from the intertwining of the masterpieces housed in the museum and Giorgio Armani's timeless creations.

L'OFFICIEL ITALIA: <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">" Giorgio Armani. Milan, for Love." Why this title for the exhibition? <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">ANGELO CRESPI: We chose him from among many others, after his passing, after reading his will. We believe he best portrays a man who embodied the soul of a city, transforming its aesthetic values into ethical principles.
LOI: How does the exhibition connect with the fiftieth anniversary of Giorgio Armani's career, which unfortunately coincided with his passing? <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">AC: The goal was to tell the story of an absolute talent through his creations. We decided to design the exhibition after Giorgio Armani visited the Pinacoteca last year. Armani's home and corporate headquarters border the Grande Brera building, and Armani perfectly represents the neighbourhood. His temperament and style were the essence of Milan. It seemed natural to us that the city's most important cultural institution would pay homage to his creativity as an artist and entrepreneur.
LOI: How was the installation conceived and what narrative was constructed? <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">AC: Giorgio Armani conceived the exhibition. Our Sculpture and Decorative Arts Department then worked with the company to make the exhibition both evocative and scientifically rigorous. Since it's a costume exhibition in an art museum, it was necessary to balance the different languages, finding a balance that would honour the clothing without interfering with the paintings.
LOI: How do the clothes interact with the works kept in the Pinacoteca? <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">AC: Giorgio Armani's approach was marked by humility and simplicity. From the first visit, it was clear to all of us that he had no intention of competing with the absolute masterpieces of ancient art exhibited in the Pinacoteca. Rather, he wanted to establish a dialogue with the atmospheres of the rooms, each of which evokes a season, an era, a specific regional context, or a specific colour. We simply embraced this idea of simplicity.
LOI: Of the 150 looks selected, what criteria guided your choice? <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">AC: <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">Each piece is iconic in its own way, reflecting an ability to interpret the times we live in and shape their style. Armani's minimalism represented a turning point in the history of fashion, a minimalism that expressed beauty, composure, and meaning. Not unlike the monochromes or cuts of Lucio Fontana, who, not surprisingly, is considered the best of postwar Milan in the art world.
LOI: Do you have any particular memories of Giorgio Armani during the preparation of the exhibition? <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">AC: There's a photograph of Armani, almost praying before Mantegna's "Dead Christ," that I cherish as the definitive image. During a visit about a year ago, he paused before that masterpiece, as everyone does, yet in the silence of the room, his prolonged pause before such a moving painting seemed to me the act of a man foreseeing the end, in dialogue with his God.
LOI: What was the most intense moment in the creation of the exhibition for you? <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">AC: The day we received the news of his death. We all reacted as if the work we'd done up until that point had been pointless. We imagined opening with him. But then we realised that the exhibition would be the greatest tribute we could create.
LOI: Fashion enters an art museum: do you think this contamination is destined to consolidate? <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">AC: Fashion has recently entered the great museums of ancient art as well. Just think of the exhibitions at the Louvre or the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. However, this intermingling must be carefully considered. Armani's exhibition at the Pinacoteca will remain unique, precisely because of the overlap between the man, our institution, the Brera district, and the city. No other fashion house has such strong ties. Regarding the idea of a "Costume Institute," I think it's appropriate to imagine a permanent space in Milan that celebrates fashion, modelled on museums that showcase architecture and design.
LOI: What traits of Armani's personality and vision emerge most strongly from his clothes? <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">AC: Rigour, simplicity, the ability to translate an aesthetic vision into an ethical conception of life. A style that is typically Milanese: luxury and understatement, beauty in the essential. As with design, less is more. I believe Armani was appreciated precisely for his humanity, which made him a master of life as well as style.
LOI: What emotion or reflection will the visitor take away with him? <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">AC: A sense of beauty. The beauty that radiates from the Pinacoteca's masterpieces and Armani's creations.

Giorgio Armani: Milan for Love Exhibition

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