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Dressing Richard Gere in 1980’s American Gigolo helped Giorgio Armani become Giorgio Armani. In a new GQ video, the actor reflects on the late designer’s outsized legacy. —Yang-Yi Goh, senior style editor |
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Richard Gere on His 45-Year Friendship With Giorgio Armani |
Over the course of his 50-year career, Giorgio Armani costumed hundreds of movies. None were more impactful than 1980’s American Gigolo, starring a young Richard Gere decked out in the Italian designer’s lightweight, drapey tailoring, which became the revelatory foundation of American power dressing in the decade to come and turned Armani into a household name.
The collaboration came to define both men, as Gere tells GQ in an exclusive video tribute to the menswear titan, who died in September at the age of 91. “I don't think I even had a suit before I had those clothes,” the actor says. “But I think I took some from the set after that.”
From that point on, Mr. Armani and Gere stuck together. As Gere puts it, when he wore a tuxedo, it had to be by Armani, and his personal style became inextricably linked to Armani’s understated elegance. “It's kind of bizarre, but I could walk into any of his stores and take a suit off the rack and it would fit me,” Gere recalls.
More importantly, the two men became close friends, a maestro and his muse with a shared reputation for creativity and perfection. Following Mr. Armani’s death, Gere traveled to Milan to attend the designer’s posthumous runway show. After all their decades of friendship, it was in fact the first time Gere attended an Armani show, an experience he describes as “very moving.”
“He enjoyed playing dress up, basically,” Gere says. “When I was a kid, my mother would make costumes for the plays I was in, and I think he was like that. He enjoyed playing, but with the talent and the craft of a craftsman who gets the details right.”
For more of Gere’s personal insights into Mr. Armani’s work, reuniting with Lauren Hutton at the Armani show, and the famous dressing room scene in American Gigolo, watch the full video here.
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