Never forget that Giorgio Armani is a small-town boy: born in Piacenza, a cathedral town in northwest Italy, in 1934, he grew up dreaming of more for himself. He talks often of his mother’s rigour and dignity; of the hardships of interwar and postwar Italy. It sounds like the script of an Italian neo-realist film by Roberto Rossellini or Vittorio De Sica, except, of course, it was real. “That idea of achieving so much, even with so little, says Armani, who has achieved so much.
Given Armani’s backstory, it’s fitting that the images on these pages — these scenes, even — also resemble ones culled from a movie. They star Michelle Dockery, who reprises her role as Lady Mary in a big-screen continuation of the period drama Downton Abbey, reaching…
