Word: fabricate
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Armani, who reversed the usual career pattern by designing for men before making women's clothes, brought not only his fine eye for fabric but his scrupulous tailoring to the women's line. "My first jackets for women," he confesses, "were in fact men's jackets in women's sizes." Says Stutz: "Taking that snappy, pinched-in-the-right-place Italian men's wear look and translating it into women's clothes was Armani's special contribution. No one had ever done that before...
...translation, in this case, was all in the tailoring: the moving of buttons and dropping of lapels, the sloping of shoulders and strategic modification of inner structure by following the Savile Row technique of not gluing the lining to the underside of the fabric. The result, an epiphany of choreographed rumple, was like cutting the buckles and taking the stuffing from a straitjacket. Citizens out for a stroll down a sunny American boulevard, or cabbing to a cocktail party, or even (gasp!) commuting to their office, looked like first-class cruise passengers who had just unpacked for a walk around...
...little on-the-job training, Cerruti sent Armani off to spend a month in a factory, where, Armani recalls, "I fell in love with textiles and began to understand the work behind each yard of fabric. That's why today, when I see anyone throwing away a sample of cloth, it's like cutting off my hand." He stayed with Cerruti and nourished until 1970; then, buttressed by Galeotti's perfervid reassurances, he decided to make his move as an independent designer...
Beginning usually with a sketch and a bolt of fabric, Armani will work out each of the 500 pieces he designs for his collections, most of which he will offer to buyers in a choice of three colors or fabric combinations. Occasionally, he will wrangle with Galeotti over the practicality of a design ("He will insist I've gone too far, that something is just not salable"), and often he sounds out staff members, whom he calls "my family." But all the designs, even his commissioned uniforms for the Italian Air Force, are Armani's. Unlike some...
...this jacket here. I kept it 'cause the cat peed on it." Barnes, 28, admits to doing "kind of spacy designs. But in a time when kids are playing electronic games, we shouldn't be bringing back Argyle socks." Barnes, like Armani, designs her fabric, but goes so far as to weave a sample swatch on her own hand loom, whipping up wild combos of silk, cotton and wool. "I found that I could sell the wildest fabrics for men if the style wasn't outrageous," she says. Barnes has a flexible definition of outrageous...