5 Designers Carrying Giorgio Armani’s Legacy In Menswear

Giorgio Armani on the runway at Giorgio Armani Men’s Fall 2024 as part of Milan Men’s Fashion Week held on January 15, 2024 in Milan, Italy. (Photo by Aitor Rosas Sune/WWD via Getty Images)

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Giorgio Armani’s passing last week sent ripples through the fashion world, with tributes pouring in from across the globe. Over more than fifty years, Armani built a brand that defined Italian elegance and reshaped the way men dress. His approach to proportion, color and ease of tailoring became a blueprint for generations of designers who continue to borrow, reinterpret and build upon his legacy today. From runway minimalists to new voices rethinking the suit altogether, Armani’s vision is still the reference point for designers.

Armani’s Enduring Influence

Armani’s genius was in making simplicity profound. His collections carried an ease and elegance that managed to feel both timeless and distinctly of their moment. With an instinctive grasp of proportion and color, he created clothes that still speak to each other across decades—pieces from the 1980s that can sit comfortably alongside those from his most recent shows.

As menswear writer Leon Hedgepeth notes, Armani’s legacy can even be distilled into a single shade: navy. “Beyond wearing it as his personal uniform, Armani reinvented the shade season after season, the way most designers lean on black as their canvas,” Hedgepeth writes. More than just color, though, Armani represented a way of dressing grounded in restraint and craftsmanship—seen in the drape of pleated trousers, the cut of a boxy double-breasted blazer and the understated elegance of his runway presentations—the true meaning of “quiet luxury” that so many try to emulate today.

It’s little wonder, then, that Armani’s presence can still be felt so strongly in contemporary menswear. The designers pushing the field forward today—whether through tailoring, minimalism or subtle subversion—are all, in some way, working in conversation with his vision. Here are five who stand out as carrying his legacy into the present.

FRANCE – JANUARY 17: A model walks the runway during the Lemaire Menswear Fall/Winter 2018-2019 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on January 17, 2018 in Paris, France. (Photo by Victor VIRGILE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

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LEMAIRE

For Nico Lazaro, writer and stylist, Paris-based LEMAIRE sits at the forefront of carrying Armani’s legacy forward. Founded in 1991 by Christophe Lemaire, the label has become known for its oversized proportions, tonal palettes and uncompromising materials. Season after season, the brand creates clothes that, as Lazaro explains, “live with you rather than stand apart from you.”

That sentiment could just as easily describe Armani’s own approach. Over five decades, he redefined elegance by making tailoring feel effortless—balancing precision with ease in a way that still guides the best designers working today. “Lemaire feels like the closest successor to Armani,” Lazaro says, pointing to its “quiet authority, ease in tailoring and devotion to clothes that live with you rather than stand apart from you.”

Italian creative director Gerardo Cavaliere (L) poses with his wife Italian Margherita Cardelli founders of Giuliva Heritage upon arrival ahead of The BoF 500 Gala at the Shangri-La Hotel in Paris, on the sidelines of the Paris Fashion Week Spring-Summer 2025, on September 28, 2024. (Photo by GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT / AFP) (Photo by GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT/AFP via Getty Images)

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Giuliva Heritage

Husband-and-wife duo Margherita Cardelli and Gerardo Cavaliere founded Giuliva Heritage as a love letter—to one another and to the broader Italian artisan tradition. Being Italian himself, Cavaliere naturally draws on many of the same cultural and sartorial influences that shaped Giorgio Armani’s work. At the heart of Giuliva Heritage is a refined sprezzatura: garments designed with a sense of ease and elegance, often through slightly exaggerated cuts that balance and enhance the wearer’s natural silhouette. The result is clothing that complements the body while introducing subtle dimension, standing apart from traditional or off-the-rack suiting.

Stòffa

With a name that literally means “fabric” in Italian, Stòffa places the behavior of materials at the heart of its design. The brand’s latest collections reveal a disciplined approach that balances proportion with the fundamentals of tailoring. Stòffa often works with an exaggerated frame, using tonal layering and carefully accented pieces to create outfits that may appear effortless but are undoubtedly intentional.

In this respect, Stòffa echoes Armani’s influence: a deep understanding of how fabric interacts with the body, combined with a commitment to proportion and understated elegance. Like Armani, the brand shows that subtle adjustments in cut and layering can transform simple pieces into something quietly authoritative, proving that restraint and precision remain central to their vision.

Dior

Though Dior was founded nearly three decades before Armani’s own brand, it is the latest iteration of the maison under Jonathan Anderson which feels in conversation with Armani’s legacy. Most notably, his debut Spring/Summer 2026 collection, shown during Paris Fashion Week in June. While it’s safe to say that Anderson’s interpretation of the Dior legacy is more exaggerated, slightly feminine, in its execution, the subtle use of blues, greys and greens shows a clear understanding of the subtlety of color and the need to let a collection “breathe” by utilizing neutrals in a wardrobe.

A model presents a creation by Dior Homme for the Menswear Ready-to-wear Spring-Summer 2026 collection as part of the Paris Fashion Week in Paris, on June 27, 2025. (Photo by Bertrand GUAY / AFP) (Photo by BERTRAND GUAY/AFP via Getty Images)

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Soshiotsuki

The recent winner of the LVMH Prize, Soshi Otsuki is a Japanese designer who credits Armani as a major influence on his recent collection. As reported by Vogue, Otsuki began collecting Armani in high school. It was this collection which ultimately became the inspiration for his Spring collection.

“I used to think that draping was only for dresses, but looking at photos [of Armani’s designs], I realized that, for example, when you put your hand in a pocket, the fabric drapes in a certain way and all of it is calculated,” Otsuki told Vogue.

It’s hard not to see the similarities in style between Otsuki’s latest collection and one of Armani’s most memorable fashion moments, when he supplied the wardrobe for Richard Gere in American Gigolo. With louche tailoring and cool confidence, there is undoubtedly a sang-froid air about Armani that seems to transcend time and place. In many ways, his work continues to serve as a canvas for the next generation of menswear designers, offering a foundation of proportion, drape and effortless style upon which designers can put their own stories into the clothes. In Otsuki’s collection, elements of the Japanese salaryman mixed with the urbanity of Gere’s Julian Kay create a compelling blend of references that ultimately play to each designer’s strength. Or, as Tokyo correspondent for Vogue Runway, Ashley Ogawa Clarke noted in a recent newsletter, “If these clothes could talk they might have an Italian accent, but their mother tongue would be Japanese.”

Images courtesy of Soshiotsuki

Images courtesy of Soshiotsuki

A Legacy That Lives On

While the world says goodbye to a legend, Armani’s influence is still very much with us. From the suits we wear to the designers who carry his vision forward, his approach to proportion, color, and effortless tailoring continues to shape menswear. Arrivederci, Il Signore.

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