"With very little money, she was elegant. And she often wore men's clothes," Armani once said of his mother.
To understand the essence of Giorgio Armani, the origin of his pure style and the root of his aversion to vulgarity, one must not look to the catwalks of Milan or the red carpets of Hollywood. One must go back to Piacenza, to the war years, and see a woman. Her name was Maria Raimondi, his mother. She was the first, unconscious muse, the true genetic code of the Armani empire.
"With very little money, my mother was extremely elegant," the designer often said. "She taught me many things, among them the simplicity and rigor of elegance: only what is necessary to make something beautiful and nothing more." This lesson, acquired in childhood, became the pillar of his aesthetic and entrepreneurial philosophy. On his yacht, he carried a black and white photo of himself as a child on a beach, next to this "dark-eyed beauty," dressed in a skirt and very stylish.
