Giorgio Armani: A $700 Beetle, Armani Dolci Jam and a Will With a 30% Lock

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In 1975 Giorgio Armani sold his Volkswagen Beetle for $700 to help launch the company he built with partner Sergio Galeotti. Lacking factories, he licensed his name, signing with manufacturer GFT in 1978 and later with Simint for Armani Exchange. In the 1990s he reversed course and bought back manufacturing, acquiring Antinea in 1990 and Simint in 1996. He expanded into beauty with L'Oréal in 1980 and eyewear with Luxottica in 1988, then Armani Casa furniture, Armani Fiori flowers and Armani Dolci chocolates and jams. In 2010 the first Armani Hotel opened across 39 floors of Dubai's Burj Khalifa, and his film work ran from American Gigolo in 1980 to The Wolf of Wall Street.

Controversies piled up: a 1999 donation to the Guggenheim preceded an Armani retrospective there, a 2014 Greenpeace report tied luxury supply chains including Armani's to toxic chemicals, and the same year the company paid a 270 million euro tax settlement in Italy. Armani kept operating in Russia after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In 2024 Italian authorities placed Giorgio Armani operations under judicial administration after finding subcontracted sweatshop labor using undeclared immigrant workers near Milan, and in August 2025 the company was fined 3.5 million euros. Armani died on September 4, 2025, at 91, leaving a will designed to protect the brand's independence.

• After the Greenpeace report the company pledged to eliminate the chemicals by 2020, and it went fur-free in 2016.
• In February 2022 Armani held a silent runway show in Milan, while critics noted his Russian business continued.
• As late as 2021 he publicly rejected merging with LVMH or Kering.
• His will directs a 15 percent sale to a preferred buyer such as LVMH or L'Oréal within 18 months, rising to as much as 54.9 percent, or an IPO.
• The Giorgio Armani Foundation, set up in 2016, must always keep at least 30 percent, giving it a blocking minority.