With the death of Italian designer Giorgio Armani on Thursday, September 4, at the age of 91, one of the last great makers of modern fashion is gone. For more than four decades, the man with periwinkle eyes built an empire that ended up merging with his person – a rare union that finds its source in a personal story that seems like a Balzacian saga in Italian.

Armani was born on July 11, 1934, in Piacenza, a small town near Milan, the youngest of three siblings (with an older brother, Sergio, and a younger sister, Rosanna). Italy was living through dark times: Under the regime of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), the country was sinking into fascism and poverty. The designer spoke frankly though sparingly about this seminal period, evoking here and there a mother who was a little cold and distant, a fear of nightly bombings, nights in shelters, childhood friends killed, a father arrested for his fascist sympathies after the war.

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