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The life and career of Giorgio Armani is set to be the subject of a high-end TV series produced by Italy’s Lux Vide, which is collaborating with the fashion house founded by the iconic designer known for his close ties
to Hollywood.
The still-untitled Armani biopic series — which will be tailored for the international market — has enlisted Turkish-born Italy-based director Ferzan Ozpetek, who is known for combining artistic depth with box-office appeal.
Ozpetek, who knew Armani personally, recently scored a global hit with the 2025 crowdpleaser “Diamonds,” about a group of warm-hearted women in a Rome atelier rushing to fulfill a demanding order from an Oscar-winning costume designer client in the 1970s. “Diamonds” scored mightily at the box local office and traveled widely. Ozpetek’s TV experience includes 2022’s first Disney+ Italian original series “The Ignorant Angels,” a romantic drama spun off from his local hit “Ignorant Fairies.”
“I knew, admired and spent time with Giorgio for many years, both on official occasions and in more private settings,” Ozpetek said in a statement to Variety. “We talked about cinema, of which he was notably passionate and an expert. But also about art, costumes, architecture, and, I would say, life itself. I could see within him a visionary and a brilliant artist. But also a down-to-earth and very determined man.”
The director added: “The opportunity to tell his story is both an exciting honor and a challenge that involves capturing the many facets of such a complex, original and captivating personality.”
Ozpetek is co-writing the screenplay for the Armani series in collaboration with Lux Vide’s head writer Francesco Arlanch, whose credits include Lux’s widely exported series “Medici,” “Hotel Costiera” and medical drama “Doc.” Storylines and series structure are being kept under wraps.
Known globally as the Milan-based fashion pioneer with piercing blue eyes and a vision that combined laid back elegance and attention to detail, Armani first made his mark with the unlined men’s sports jackets and deconstructed suits worn by Richard Gere in 1980 in “American Gigolo.” But Armani also reimagined the woman’s power suit. He dressed scores of Hollywood’s female stars including Julia Roberts, Diane Keaton, Jodie Foster, Cate Blanchett, Lupita Nyong’o, Anne Hathaway and Michelle Yeoh in both minimalist attire — such as the Armani men’s suit famously worn by Julia Roberts when she won a Golden Globe for “Steel Magnolias” in 1990 — and glittery gowns like the “Nairobi blue” crystal-encrusted sequin gown worn by Lupita Nyong’o at the 2024 Academy Awards. The long list of male actors who regularly wore Armani on red carpets, and also on screen, comprises Leonardo DiCaprio, George Clooney Russell Crowe, Robert De Niro and Tom Cruise, to name a few.
His Hollywood connection earned Armani wardrobe film credits in more than 200 movies.
Armani — a self-made man who fully owned his $10 billion fashion empire at the time of his death on Sept. 4, 2025 at age 91 – was known to often appear in dark trousers and his trademark black T-shirt. He was born in the northern Italian town of Piacenza on July 11, 1934. After two decades in the fashion industry starting in 1957, he and his partner Sergio Galeotti sold their Volkswagen for $10,000 to start up their own menswear ready-to-wear label. They launched both men’s and women’s lines the following year.
Fiercely private, Armani rarely discussed his personal life. He did tell Vanity Fair that he had romances with both men and women. He was in long-term relationship with Galeotti until his AIDS-related death in 1985.
The Giorgio Armani fashion house has agreed to support production of the Fremantle TV series, providing access to its “archives, creations and iconic locations, offering an unparalleled insight into the world and legacy of one of fashion’s most influential figures,” according to a Fremantle statement.
“For years, Lux had been chasing the dream of telling the world the story of Giorgio Armani, an artist who invented a unique and recognizeable style,” Lux Vide founder and president Matilde Bernabei said in a statement. She went on to describe Armani as “a standard-bearer of Made in Italy who rewrote the rules of style and elegance.”
“It will be an ambitious series,” Bernabei added, “and we are proud to know that the market has immediately embraced this project with interest, enthusiastically confirming its international potential.”
