05/09/2025
Fashion icon Giorgio Armani has died at 91, leaving behind a complicated legacy that's worth unpacking. The man who dressed Hollywood's elite and built a €2.7 billion empire was also one of the world's richest LGBTQ+ business moguls - but his relationship with our community was a bit messy.
His 2015 comments about gay men still sting: "A homosexual man is a man 100 per cent. He does not need to dress homosexual. When homosexuality is exhibited to the extreme - to say: 'Ah, you know I'm homosexual' - that has nothing to do with me. A man has to be a man."
Basically telling us to stay in the closet and butch it up.
Yet this same man spent over a decade in a passionate relationship with business partner Sergio Galeotti in the 70s and 80s, only opening up about their love story last year when he told Italian media about falling for Sergio's "Tuscan smile" at a nightclub.
Armani's story reminds us that even our most successful icons can be frustratingly contradictory - living their truth privately while demanding others tone theirs down publicly.
