Only for Love

“I was born on 11 July 1934 in Piacenza, a city over two thousand years old, on the banks of the river Po.” The writer is not just any author, but Giorgio Armani. These are the opening words of the biography Per Amore, hot off the press and published by Rizzoli, with which the famous designer – still today at the helm of Armani, which has never succumbed to the flattery of the large foreign luxury groups and is a proud flag bearer of Italian style and manufacturing – talks about his life through the medium of writing. Back in 2015, to mark the 40th anniversary of his brand, Armani produced a book that told the story of his life in images. It was an instant success.

“The events of the pandemic,” writes the designer in the introduction to his new book, “have been warning, a wake-up call. No one could escape. I thought a lot and acted promptly, finding myself close to people like never before. This closeness led me to rethink the book, to enrich it, making it a very personal document: one of commitment, dedication, vision. Fashion is the background, but what it really talks about is life.” Per Amore, “a title that is both soft and provocative, which surprisingly reflects me.” 

Giorgio Armani recounts the events that concern his family, from early childhood with the memory of his brothers, the war, the Fascist regime and the bombings. Intimate memories, such as how his parents met “on the stage of the Filodrammatica di Piacenza” while they were performing A Doll’s House by Ibsen, or the death of his father: “I was twenty-five and I felt I never really knew him.”