With Men’s Fall/Winter 2026/27 fashion week behind us, the season’s prevailing message was clear: softness is strength. Designers embraced unstructured tailoring, featherlight jackets, relaxed trousers, and oversized shirts and knits with fluid, rounded shoulders — silhouettes that favored ease over rigidity. One couldn’t help but see these trends as an unspoken tribute to Giorgio Armani, who passed away on September 4, 2025, at the age of 91.
Sergio Galeotti and Giorgio Armani co-founders of the Armani brand in 1975 (Image credit: giorgioarmani Instagram)
When Armani died, the world mourned the loss of more than a designer — it lost a man who built an empire on subtlety, restraint, and human warmth. Yet those who knew him best understood that behind the measured confidence and quiet brilliance of his craft stood a constant, steady love: First with his co-founder Sergio Galeotti (1945-1985) and then with Leo Dell’Orco, his “right‑hand man” and now creative director of Armani menswear.
Leo Dell’Orco and Giorgio Armani (Image credit: giorgioarmani Instagram)
For over half a century, Leo was not only Armani’s partner but also his closest collaborator, the man who understood that Giorgio’s minimalist perfection was never cold — it was intimate. Their relationship was private, even quiet, yet it informed everything the Armani brand became. Together, they cultivated a vision rooted in emotional intelligence — clothes that whispered, never shouted; tailoring that respected the body, not the ego.
Leo, who began working with Armani in the 1970s, became the silent architect of the designer’s most enduring codes. Where Giorgio articulated purity and proportion, Leo safeguarded the soul of the brand. Their dialogue — both personal and creative — was one of continuous refinement. Every softened shoulder, every whisper of silk, every measured tone of taupe felt like a conversation between them, an unspoken understanding turned tangible.
Armani Fall/Winter 2026/27 (Image credit: giorgioarmani Instagram)
Now, as the world looks toward the Spring 2026–2027 menswear collection — the first conceived entirely under Leo’s direction since Armani’s passing — the clothes themselves feel like a eulogy written in fabric. Reviewers have called it a “silent ode” to Armani, but perhaps it is better understood as a love letter — one from Leo to the man who taught the world that elegance is not about attention, but about affection.
Armani Fall/Winter 2026/27 (Image credit: giorgioarmani Instagram)
The collection avoids spectacle. Instead, it returns to Armani’s earliest language: clean linen blazers, sculpted trousers, muted desert tones, and that unmistakable sense of ease. There are hints of mourning — a softness in the cut, a delicacy in the color gradients, as if the garments are woven with memory. Yet amid the restraint, there is light: glimpses of hope, renewal, and simple devotion.
Giorgio Armani 2025 (Image credit: giorgioarmani Instagram)
In the end, Armani’s greatest creation may not have been a jacket or a silhouette, but a life lived alongside two people who shared his understanding of beauty — that quiet confidence and serenity born not from fame, but from love. The Spring 2026–2027 season stands as an eloquent testament to that belief: that love, like great design, endures through form, line, and time.
