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Giorgio Armani’s legacy in UAE, from Golden Visa to branded residences in Burj Khalifa
The most commercially successful designer of his time — at 208, he was the highest placed fashion designer in this year’s Forbes World Billionaires list
- PUBLISHED: Fri 12 Sept 2025, 4:12 PM UPDATED: Sat 13 Sept 2025, 4:23 PM
Four years ago, in Downtown Dubai, Coldplay front man Chris Martin serenaded the Burj Khalifa at a private celebration for the 10-year anniversary of Dubai’s Armani Hotel. Seated barefoot at a piano (earlier, the singer had quipped that Armani couldn’t find his shoe size), Martin dedicated Coldplay’s single A Sky Full of Stars to the world’s tallest building, anchored by the Armani Hotel Dubai.
“I don’t want to make all the other buildings jealous,” he smiled, looking up at the dazzling skyscraper effortlessly eclipsing its neighbours. Martin’s performance followed a catwalk showcasing Giorgio Armani’s spring/summer 2022 men and women’s collections, and Armani Privé haute couture looks. It was a celebration of quietly soaring ambition and timeless style. Much like the symbiosis between the Armani Group and the UAE.
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This month, another star is added to the sky. On September 4, aged 91, fashion designer Giorgio Armani died at his home in Milan. He was the chairman, chief executive, and creative director of the €2.3 billion (Dh9.9 billion) Armani Group, a company controlled solely by him, up until his death.
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The most commercially successful designer of his time — at 208, he was the highest placed fashion designer in this year’s Forbes World Billionaires list, with an estimated net worth of $11.8 billion (Dh43 billion) — Armani’s legacy goes beyond commerce, into culture. And that’s where Armani’s resonance with the UAE runs deepest. It was in 1994 that Al Tayer Insignia, the conglomerate behind a large swathe of the Middle East’s luxury retail landscape, opened its first luxury fashion store. The name above the door? Giorgio Armani.
Born in 1934, Armani launched his eponymous company in 1975, aged 41 (entrepreneurs young and old, take note). His fluid designs and neutral palette came to define the 1980s era of modern power dressing, and when Armani opened a showroom in Los Angeles in 1988, the brand became synonymous with celebrity and cinema.
It’s a relationship that thrives to this day, with the Venice Film Festival playing host to Armani’s 50th anniversary celebration just days before his passing, attracting stars such as Cate Blanchett and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Never in doubt, the event reinforced the breathtaking desirability of the Armani fashion canon; whether an immaculate ivory trouser suit à la Blanchett, or a more daring cut-away gown trimmed with feathers from the Armani Privé couture line, as worn by Huntington-Whiteley (those not in possession of chiselled A-list abs need not apply).
Both women embody Armani’s ethos as the antithesis of fast fashion, and the discipline that’s found in controlled simplicity. Despite eschewing the kinds of visually attention-grabbing designs that commandeer social media algorithms, in 2007 Armani became the first luxury house to broadcast his fashion shows live on the Internet.
A foresight into the digital democratisation of fashion that shares a visionary outlook with the Group’s partners in the UAE. As well as Armani fashion and interiors stores, and the Armani Hotel and Residences in Burj Khalifa, the UAE is also set to host Armani Beach Residences on Palm Jumeirah and the first Armani branded villas in the world, which are being developed in Ras Al Khaimah.
Granted a UAE Golden Visa in 2021, Armani may have been quintessentially Italian, but the UAE is pivotal to the Armani universe. Both approach storytelling with the cinematic scope of Martin Scorsese — a longtime Armani collaborator — and embody a classic elegance that cuts through noise, transcends trends, commands commercial success, and, like Armani’s legacy, creates a constellation of stars.