Armani pays homage to proletariat

CAHAL MILMO observes a fashion billionaire's transformation into a workers' champion.

Workers of the world, pull on your designer jeans!

Some 154 years after the proletariat was first roused by Karl Marx, it received its latest call to arms from Giorgio Armani.

The Italian fashion billionaire, hitherto known for clothing the cream of bourgeois society, claims to have found the true path by rejecting the corrupt and decadent world of luxury goods.

Speaking at the launch of his latest menswear collection in Milan, featuring such staples of the artisans' wardrobe as flat caps and donkey jackets, Armani said his personal manifesto would see elitist designs cast aside in favour of attire more suited to the great unwashed.

"I'll tell you something," declared the man whose creations are the staple of Hollywood stars such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Brad Pitt and George Clooney. "Luxury disgusts me. I want to pay homage to the workers, to the dignity of the workers with their simplicity and straightforwardness."

Admirable sentiments, but then the creator of some of the world's most expensive tailoring went one step further in voicing his admiration for the working class.

Not only was his latest collection modelled on the look of soldiers and miners, but his clothing was affordable for even the man in the street.

Asked which garments he had in mind to replace Chairman Mao's uniforms, Armani pointed to his cheaper clothing lines, in particular his jeans, which sell for a mere £100 ($340).

Before disappearing, doubtless to man the barricades, he added: "I do not shut myself away in my workshop, like some others do, to cynically and presumptuously create luxury items."

Commentators acidly pointed out that Armani did not venture whether his conviction for tax evasion in 1996, when he was given a nine-month suspended jail sentence and fined after bribing tax officials to perform "friendly" audits, had played any part in the formation of his anti-consumerist philosophy.

For the proletarian New Zealander, the Armani Collezioni is available at Smith & Caughey in Auckland.

There, the working-class man can pick up a casual leather jacket for $3550 or work shirt for $595. A working-class woman can buy a casual winter jacket for $1699 or work trousers for $735.

Vogue magazine editor Alexandra Shulman told the Daily Telegraph she was taken aback by Armani's new socialist leanings. Armani clothes were always minimalist in style but they were not minimalist in price.

"Giorgio Armani Collection clothes are extremely expensive."

- INDEPENDENT