Twenty years next to Maestro Giorgio Armani: fears, anxieties and that “donatella fuck!” remained in history

I had recently arrived in Giorgio Armani, in December 1986, was working at crazy pace, without times or limits. And in addition, Mr. Armani during the meetings when he wanted to be frustrating and irritating like no other.

During a very long staff meeting with all the top management (I was present only as assistant to the vice -president, with the task of taking notes), at some point during a lively discussion he asked me to check in the notes if he really had said a certain thing. Shyly, I confirmed it. He electrocuted me with a flash of blue in those eyes: “Fuck Donatella!”. Instinctively I showed him the notes and a: “Fuck Mr. Armani escaped me!”. A glacial silence has dropped, in that meeting room. I thought he would disagree instantly. Instead he looked at me while the shadow of a smile hovered on his face. Since that day, on the occasion of a meeting with him, his secretaries called me howing to laugh: “Fuckon, meeting with Mr. Armani.”

On the other hand, the feeling between me and the master was born immediately. My first interview in Giorgio Armani was directly with him. I was terrified of the idea of ​​not likeing him. I had carefully chosen the look, but nothing seemed to me up to it. He was kind, but decisive: the conversation lasted a few minutes: with two questions he had already understood everything. In the end, he offered me the job.

For a long time his presence put me in agitation. Those sky -color eyes, capable of piercing you without the need for words, and that candid hair, so well -kept that made it together authoritative and light. I always felt observed, evaluated, as if every gesture were a test. The terror was to make mistakes: not to notice the details, not to have that sophistication that he meant. With him it was not necessary to be flashy – and not only in the aesthetic sense. It was an attitude. A ability to “float”, to move grace and measure. This is what I learned next to him: to observe carefully, decide calmly, because so much, in the end, he saw everything.

One of his gaze was enough to overturn a situation or find the best solution, as if it were always a step forward. Over time I started to know him better. Or maybe I changed me. And in that gaze, from which I first felt judged, I learned to see even more. He was simply for what he was: a genius. Eclectic, very hard with everyone, but above all with himself. And deeply alone. A solitude that did not suffer, but chose. And perhaps this is precisely his greatest legacy: having shown that talent is never comfortable, that true elegance is not appearance but a look at the world. To those who were lucky enough to work next to him, they left the most precious lesson: Never be satisfied, continue looking for that step forward.