Elegant, determined, a little unknowable: Giorgio Armani is gone but will never be forgotten

The designer, who reinvented power dressing and redefined what it meant to look modern, was the architect of how we dress now

Giorgio Armani dressed all of us. Whether or not you ever had the money for a jacket with an Armani label, you wore a jacket that he invented. He was the mastermind of contemporary style, the architect of how we dress now. If you have worn an unstructured suit with a T-shirt to a wedding; if you have worn muted neutrals to work; if you have thought it might be chic to paint your living room grey: that was Armani.

Armani was working until his final days. Invitations had already been sent out for his next show, to be held on 28 September in the 14th-century courtyard of Milan’s Palazzo Brera. A spectacular party to accompany the show was planned as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the brand, which he founded in the summer of 1975.