R.I.P. Giorgio Armani. By Dish Stanley

“Barney’s wasn’t a store—or not just … things you’d see there first and only. Armani before Armani was Armani, before the $2 billion global business and the one name status; when we found him, he was a handsome guy called Giorgio with a rinky-dink office in Milan.“ Gene Pressman, They All Came To Barneys

My black Giorgio Armani tuxedo suit wasn’t the first extravagant purchase I bought at Barney’s. That was a Jil Sander winter coat I wrote about a couple weeks ago in The Belt Is Metaphorical. In that I share the story of my first time shopping at Barney’s and the first time I met Claire, a tall willowy brunette with straight shiny hair cut in a razor sharp bob who was a former Calvin Klein model.

My relationship with Barney’s, and with Claire, blossomed after that first visit. It led to me buying my first ‘investment suit,’ a lightweight four-season dark grey Jil Sander suit. That suit was what we’d now call “quiet luxury.” Its elegance was so subtle and understated that I was able to wear it once a week for a decade. (It was also that well made. Worth every penny.)

A couple years after buying the Jil Sander suit, when I needed something snazzy for a black tie party that was a quasi-professional function. It was the fall of 1999 and I had recently moved from New York to Boston to marry my late husband. New city, new life, new job, new coworkers, new friends. I called Claire, of course. She sent the Giorgio Armani tux (shown above) to my office overnight.

This Armani tux wasn’t his typical softly structured design with fluid draping in a crepe wool. It was much more of a nod to Yves Saint Laurent’s iconic Le Smoking suit with sharp lines and strong shoulders. It struck the perfect balance between feminine glamour and impeccable tailoring. When I slipped the jacket on I felt gorgeous, feminine and sexy. I could wear the jacket with nothing (or something sheer) underneath to dial up the femme fatale. Or, for an event where I’d be running into men who I worked with, I could wear a white (or pale pink) silk shirt.

I wore it to that holiday event in 2000, and I’ve been wearing it for over twenty years since.

Once or twice a year it’s perfect for something or other. There were years when the pants were too tight, I’m not going to lie, but the jacket always fit. I’d wear it “down” with jeans, a thin navy cashmere turtleneck and a pair of black suede boots, or “up” with a pair of elegant Manolo Blahnik heels. I wore it through many years when the jacket’s strong shoulder was no longer considered ‘in style,’ but even then I felt that the shape was so iconic it worked.

I have occasionally thought about taking it into a really fine tailor to get the shoulder sculpted down a little but I worry that, like getting a bad facelift, I could ruin it. 

After all these years, I still feel beautiful and quietly, femininely powerful in it. Something special happens when I put it on. Perhaps part of it is that it carries with it the stories of every place I’ve been to and every person I’ve been with in it over the last 20+ years — from that first boisterous holiday party at the Four Seasons in Boston to one of the last nights I spent out with my late husband.

We had gone to the Cafe Carlyle in New York to see Bobby Short. It was dark and the tables were tucked in close to each other. My late husband’s right foot got caught on the low-hanging edge of the tablecloth and pulled the tablecloth down, knocking the entire table setting over — water glasses, candles, bud vase, everything — it all went loudly crashing onto the floor, just as the show was about to start. “You make quite an entrance,” Bobby said in his silky, low voice, nodding toward our table. “I don’t usually get upstaged from the start. Not here at the legendary Cafe Carlyle,” he said with a wry twinkle. Everybody laughed, including my husband, though he was dying inside.

I remembered seeing a clip of Stevie Nicks singing Rhiannon live in 1975 and thinking that her flowing black chiffon cape looked like it had fantastical powers. People talk about how donning special outfits can make them feel as if they are putting on armor. To me, Stevie’s cape looked more like wings than armor, though the wings of a dark, mysterious angel, for sure. That’s more of how I’d describe the feeling I have putting on my Armani suit. Not so much armor. Not so much a form of protection or defense, but stepping into something that might take me some place fabulous and magical.

And it has, many times.

Clothes have power. Nobody knew that better than Barney’s. Or Armani. I learned that from Claire. Just as Armani’s story is woven into the story of Barney’s (Barney‘s knew “Armani before Armani was Armani”), my Armani suit is woven into the stories of my life.

Thank you Armani. And thank you Barney’s, and Claire.

The Crush Letter
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