Armani Silos
Category: Art & Architecture
Location: Milan, Italy
FASHION / ARMANI SILOS / MILAN / ITALY
In 1980, Richard Gere starred as the main character in the film American Gigolo, dressed almost exclusively in Armani. The film made him famous, and turned Armani into a household name.
It didn’t take long for Armani to become one of the most important forces in fashion.
Even today, many fashion journalists and buyers still talk about how Armani turned Milan into one of the top fashion cities of the world, a destination not to be missed for those wanting to know what was new in fashion.
Armani is a minimalist brand, summarised best as “less is more”.
Together with fashion brands like Donna Karan, Calvin Klein and Jil Sander, Armani was part of a larger movement, driven by a vision of uncomplicated simplicity.
Giorgio Armani’s well-known devotion to simplicity is reflected in Armani / Silos. The formerly industrial building now houses a permanent Armani exhibition, together with a space reserved for temporary fashion exhibitions.
It includes a shop and an open-plan indoor coffee shop, as well as a digital archive of the brand’s design legacy.
With its four floors, Armani / Silos is a vertical experience, centred around the sophisticated staircase in the middle of the tall building.
The name “silos” is a reference to its past, when the 4,500 square metres were used for food storage.
Today, the space is used to display the more than 40-year long career of Giorgio Armani, where the different floors are used to cleverly organise the fashion collections on display in a thematic manner.
Themes range from “androgynous” (on the relationship between fashion design and gender) to “ethnicities” (exploring the relationship between Armani and different cultures) and “stars” (unpacking the famous connection between Armani and the cinema).
It is a celebration of Armani’s distinct design vision, which forever has changed the direction of fashion.
Milan, Italy