“I put on the clothes, I put on the shoes, and I can just be him. And he does what he’s gotta do.”

For forty-five years, American Gigolo has been inspiring men to do what they gotta do — all they need is a suit. A Giorgio Armani suit. If the inspiration hasn’t worked for many, it’s only because buying the suit is easy; becoming one with it is not. (Especially so if you are not Richard Gere.)

And now, even Giorgio — the gigolo-maker — is gone.

Giorgio didn’t just make clothes; he redrew the silhouette of a society by cutting the flab from the semiotics of masculinity and modernity. Since he was called the Coco Chanel of suits, let’s get to the business of deconstructing Giorgio’s ‘Armani Jacket’ with the same precision that Roland Barthes employed to understand a Chanel outfit.

The Armani jacket was an act of rebellion against the masculine power dressing. By the 1970s, the West had recovered from WWII, Christian (Dior) and Coco (Chanel) were dead, and mad men were getting madder on money. Giorgio quietly set out to challenge the constructivist ethos of the exaggerated........

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