Italian designer Giorgio Armani’s eponymous fashion house was instrumental in forging a new path for menswear. Prior to the 1980s, men’s suiting was rigid and angular, defined by staid formality. Eschewing the stiffness characteristic of the garment, Giorgio Armani started the decade by creating the ultimate power suit. With a nipped waist and shoulder pads, the silhouette was famously donned by Richard Gere in American Gigolo and soon after, in soft cream and pastel hues by Don Johnson in Miami Vice. However, the subsequent stock market crash later that decade saw Giorgio Armani take a new approach, leaning further into the languidity of the garment and blurring the lines between casualwear and formalwear.
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Instrumental in cementing the Giorgio Armani aesthetic in the mainstream was Florentine photographer Aldo Fallai. Prior to forming his eponymous label, Giorgio Armani first met Fallai in the early 1970s when he was working as a graphic designer in Milan. The two were said to have had “an immediate understanding” and worked together for the first time in 1977. That encounter led to a collaboration that would span over three decades, with the duo defining and refining a new notion of masculinity.
“My work with Giorgio was the result of a natural, continuous dialogue and great trust on his part,” reflects Fallai. “Both of us were interested in highlighting an aspect of style linked to character and personality and this translated into images that appear just as relevant today as they did yesterday: a quality highlighted by the layout of the exhibition, which does not follow a chronological sequence.”
Fallai’s cinematic and inherently human approach to photography was the ideal accompaniment to this new vision of masculinity. His predominantly black-and-white shots were laced with a contemplative air, approaching compositions as portraits rather than fashion editorials; with the clothing subtly complementing the story at play.
Despite his role in fashion history and the instantly recognisable style of his imagery, the name Aldo Fallai is far from a household name. In an effort to shed light on Fallai’s work, Armani has produced a monographic exhibition paying tribute to the photographer’s body of work. Curated by Armani, his sister Rosanna Armani, and Leo Dell’Orco, head of menswear at Giorgio Armani, Aldo Fallai for Giorgio Armani, 1977-2021 celebrates the decades-long artistic dialogue between the designer and photographer.
In line with Armani’s approach to timeless elegance, the images are presented without captions and in an unordered format. Among them, there’s the photo with the tiger cub, taken in Palermo when the troupe took refuge at the Togni circus one rainy day; as well as the career woman, portrayed by Antonia Dell’Atte, looking directly ahead in the middle of the crowd on Via Durini by the Armani office.
“Working with Aldo allowed me from the very beginning to transform the vision I had in my mind into real images: to communicate that my clothes were not just made in a certain way with certain colours and materials, but that they represented a way of life,” explains Armani.
“Because style, for me, is a total form of expression. Together, with a constant fluid and concrete dialogue, we created scenes of life, evoked atmospheres and sketched portraits full of character. Today, looking back at everything we did, I myself am struck by the power that these shots still emanate, and by Aldo’s great ability to capture the nuances of personality.”
The Aldo Fallai for Giorgio Armani, 1977-2021 exhibition is open to the public from the 5th of December 2023 until the 11th of August 2024, with tickets available via the Armani/Silos website.
Words by AR Staff
