Category: 2. World

It all began with the jacket. Giorgio Armani twisted and bruised the angular piece of clothing — tearing out the padding, adjusting the proportions, moving the buttons — until he was left with something supple as a cardigan, light as a shirt. “Removing all rigidity from the garment and discovering an unexpected naturalness,” as he put it years later. “It was the starting point for everything that came after.”

His 1970s reimagining of the jacket — a study in nonchalance — was to be his statement of purpose as a fashion designer. Elegance, he argued, meant simplicity. That principle, applied to great acclaim over a five-decade-long career, would produce bestselling minimalist suits and turn his eponymous brand into a vast conglomerate producing haute couture, prêt-à-porter, perfumes and home interiors.

Known to industry admirers as ‘Re Giorgio’ (King Giorgio), Armani became synonymous with Italian style, helping to dress a generation of successful women, as well as men who wanted less stuffy attire. He combined the flair of the designer with the forensic attention to detail of the executive, running a business that generated billions of dollars in revenue each year and helping to make contemporary Italian fashion into a global phenomenon.

Despite being one of the world’s top designers, he carefully guarded his own privacy and kept a tight grip on the company he created, maintaining its independence and working with a small and trusted group of family members and long-term associates.

Armani, a handsome man with piercing blue eyes and silver hair, often said that the point of fashion was to make people feel good about themselves — he railed against the rigid, fussy lines that traditionally defined high tailoring. “That’s a weakness of mine that affects both my life and my work,” he told Made in Milan, Martin Scorsese’s documentary about him, in 1990. “I’m always thinking about adding something or taking something away. Mostly taking something away.”

“I can’t stand exhibitionism.”

Armani has died, aged 91, the Armani company said of its founder and CEO on Thursday, without giving a cause of death. “He worked until his final days, dedicating himself to the company, the collections, and the many ongoing and future projects,” the company said. The funeral would be held privately, it added.

To Milan

Giorgio Armani was born in 1934 in Piacenza, a town in the industrial heartland of northern Italy, close to Milan, one of three children of Ugo Armani and Maria Raimondi. His father worked at the headquarters of the local Fascist party before becoming an accountant for a transport company. His mother was a homemaker.

Despite their limited means, his parents possessed an inner elegance, Armani told Made in Milan, and Maria’s sense of style shone through in the clothes she made for her three children. “We were the envy of all our classmates,” he said. “We looked rich even though we were poor.”

As a boy, he experienced the hardships of World War Two. In his autobiography, Per Amore (For Love), he tells of how he dived into a ditch and covered his younger sister Rosanna with his jacket when a plane began firing overhead.

The family moved to Milan after the war. The city seemed very cold and big to him at first, though he soon came to appreciate its discreet beauty, he told Scorsese. It would be the start of a lifelong association. In Milan, he developed a love for cinema that later influenced his career. Eventually, he would lead his fashion group from there, helping to turn the unglamorous, industrial city into Italy’s fashion capital.

Armani studied to become a doctor, but dropped out after two years at university and did his military service. He took his first steps in fashion — which he never formally studied — when he was offered a job at renowned department store La Rinascente to help dress the windows.

His first big break came with an invitation to work for Italian designer Nino Cerruti in the mid-1960s. There, he began to experiment with deconstructing the jacket. “I started this trade almost by chance, and slowly it drew me in, completely stealing my life,” he told trade publication Business of Fashion in 2015.

Work is a kind of orgasm

As a designer, he quickly tapped into two important trends in Western society in the late 20th century — a more prominent role for women and a more fluid approach to masculinity. “I had the feeling of what actually happened – women getting to the forefront in the workplace, men accepting their soft side — early in my career, and that was the base of my success,” Armani said in an interview with Esquire magazine to mark his 90th birthday, in 2024.

Armani debuted his first menswear collection in 1975 and was soon popular in Europe. Five years later, he won the hearts of the US glittering class when he dressed Richard Gere for the 1980 film American Gigolo, beginning a long association with Hollywood.

That same year, luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman became the first US retailer to launch an in-store Armani women’s boutique, securing the designer’s transatlantic reach. In 1982, Time magazine featured him on its cover under the headline “Giorgio’s Gorgeous Style”.

A self-confessed perfectionist, the designer oversaw every detail, from advertising to models’ hair. He often said he couldn’t wait for weekends to end so that he could get back to work.

“I’ve never taken drugs, yet for me, the surge of adrenaline I get from my work is better than any hallucination or artificial high. It’s a kind of orgasm (if I may use this expression),” he wrote in Per Amore.

He told Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper in October 2024 that he planned to retire within the next two or three years, having just turned 90. Hospital treatment for an undisclosed condition forced him to miss fashion shows for the first time in his career in June and early July of this year.

He made me see the bigger world

Armani set up his business with his romantic partner Sergio Galeotti, whom he had met during a summer weekend at the Tuscan resort of Forte dei Marmi in 1966. “It was Sergio who believed in me,” Armani told GQ in 2025. “Sergio made me believe in myself. He made me see the bigger world.”

Galeotti, who had AIDS, died in 1985 at the age of 40, leaving a distraught Armani to run the business alone, with the help of his family and of long-term associate Leo Dell’Orco. “I did not hesitate, though it was daunting, and I knew I would have to learn new skills,” he told The Times in a 2019 interview. “It worked out all right,” he added, with understatement.

Armani, the company, was one of the first Italian fashion brands to expand into new markets, building a strong presence in Asia, and branching out with new fashion lines, such as the less expensive Emporio, to capitalise on an already famous name. Other fashion houses such as Prada and Dolce&Gabbana would eventually follow a similar strategy.

Armani also diversified, moving away from thousand-dollar gowns to new products, spanning hotels to chocolates, as well as interior design pieces. As the business grew, so did the scrutiny it attracted. In 1999, the New York Times questioned the Guggenheim’s decision to host a retrospective of the designer’s work just months after he had become a major benefactor to the New York-based museum. The museum denied any quid pro quo.

In 2014, the fashion house paid 270 million euros to settle an Italian tax dispute, newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore reported. Ten years later, an Italian court placed under judicial administration an Armani-owned business accused of indirectly subcontracting production to Chinese companies that exploited workers.

Armani’s unvarnished statements also sometimes generated controversy. Speaking at Milan fashion week in 2020, Armani said: “I think it’s time for me to say what I think. Women keep getting raped by designers.” He clarified what he meant — that he opposed fashion trends that sexualised women and limited their style options. The use of the word rape nevertheless shocked many.

An Armani after Armani

His work having made him fabulously wealthy, he indulged in luxury real estate. He had homes in Milan, as well as in nearby Broni in northern Italy, the southern island of Pantelleria, where he liked to spend August, and Forte dei Marmi. He also had properties in New York, Paris, on the island of Antigua, as well as in St. Moritz and Saint-Tropez. A sports fan, he owned the Olimpia Milano basketball team.

He wrote that he trusted only a few people and fiercely guarded the independence of his business. Over the years, the group received several approaches from potential investors, including one in 2021 from John Elkann, scion of Italy’s Agnelli family, and another from Gucci when Maurizio Gucci was still at the helm, but Armani always ruled out any potential deal that would have diluted his control of the company. He also refused to follow peers such as Prada into listing his company on the stock market.

“Success for me has never been about accumulating wealth, but rather the desire to say, through my work, the way I think,” he wrote in GQ Italia in December 2017. That independent stance leaves a question about what will become of his business in a luxury industry dominated by heavyweight groups. Armani’s heirs are expected to include his sister Rosanna, two nieces and a nephew working in the business, long-term collaborator Dell’Orco and a foundation.

Silvana and Roberta, the daughters of his late brother Sergio Armani, as well as his nephew, Andrea Camerana, who is Rosanna’s son, worked with him in the Armani group. Dell’Orco is also considered part of the family. In Per Amore, he vowed that his company would endure, curated by the people who had surrounded him. “There will be an Armani after Armani,” he wrote.

President Donald Trump recently said ‘defence is too defensive’ as the US wants ‘to be offensive too’.

United States President Donald Trump is due to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War in a bid to rebrand the government agency with a more forceful image.

The name change is expected to be implemented in an executive order on Friday, according to The Associated Press news agency, quoting White House officials familiar with the rebranding effort.

The “Department of War” will become the secondary name for the Department of Defense until legislative action can make the name change permanent, according to an unreleased fact sheet.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote “DEPARTMENT OF WAR” in a post on social media above a news story on the reported change.

Hegseth made no other comment.

DEPARTMENT OF WAR https://t.co/uyAZGiklRi

— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) September 4, 2025

President Trump had said a name change would remind people of past US military victories in World War I and World War II, when the US was an emerging superpower.

“Everybody likes that we had an unbelievable history of victory when it was Department of War,” he told reporters late last month.

“Then we changed it to Department of Defense,” he said.

“Defense is too defensive. And we want to be defensive, but we want to be offensive too, if we have to be,” he said.

The Department of Defence was previously known as the “Department of War” from 1789 until a reorganisation of the US military at the end of World War II, which concluded in 1945.

It was then renamed the National Military Establishment following a merger with other departments in 1947, and the name was later amended to the Department of Defense.

Those name changes were made through an act of Congress.

The defence department is frequently referred to as just the “Pentagon”, after the unique shape of its headquarters near Washington, DC, or it is referred to by its initials, “DOD”.

US media reported that it is still unclear how Trump will make the name change permanent, but Defense Secretary Hegseth will be instructed to pursue legal and legislative means, according to reports.

Hegseth made remarks similar to Trump’s regarding the department’s name in an interview on the US channel Fox News, stating that his agency wants a “warrior ethos”.

“We want warriors, folks that understand how to exact lethality on the enemy,” he said.

“We don’t want endless contingencies and just playing defence. We think words and names and titles matter. So, we’re working with the White House and the president on it. Stand by,” he said.

🔊 Listen with AI



Cancel Voice

Published On: Fri, 05 Sep 2025

10:24:42 PKT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Governor Kathy Hochul and migrant advocacy groups said on Thursday that dozens of people were detained in parts of New York state after raids in Cato and Fulton by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement federal agents.

“I am outraged by this morning’s ICE raids in Cato and Fulton, where more than 40 adults were seized — including parents of at least a dozen children at risk of returning from school to an empty house,” Hochul said in a statement released by her office.

Under President Donald Trump, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has become the driving force of his sweeping crackdown on migrants, bolstered by record funding and new latitude to conduct raids.

Trump has said he wants to deport “the worst of the worst” criminals but ICE figures have shown a rise in non-criminals being picked up.

Migrant advocacy group Rural & Migrant Ministry said on Facebook that over 70 workers were arrested after an ICE raid at a nutrition bar factory, Nutrition Bar Confectioners, in the village of Cato.

The New York Times also put the figure of those who were detained at more than 70, citing witnesses. The newspaper said the raid at the nutrition bar factory appeared to be one of the biggest workplace raids in New York since Trump’s crackdown began after he took office.

“I’ve made it clear: New York will work with the federal government to secure our borders and deport violent criminals, but we will never stand for masked ICE agents separating families and abandoning children,” Hochul added.

Mark Schmidt, 70, the principal owner of Nutrition Bar Confectioners, was quoted as saying by the New York Times that all his workers had legal documentation to work in the United States and that the operation was “overkill.”

An ICE Homeland Security Investigations spokesperson was quoted as saying by media that the step was part of “court-authorized enforcement actions.”

“While we cannot comment further about this specific ongoing criminal investigation at this time, ICE HSI remains committed to protecting the rights of workers and upholding US laws,” the spokesperson’s statement cited in Spectrum News 1 read.

Details about the raid in Fulton that Hocul mentioned were not immediately available, but the governor said such actions will not make New York safer.

“What they did was shatter hard-working families who are simply trying to build a life here,” the New York governor added. 

US President Donald Trump is once again moving ahead with a rebranding push — this time targeting the Pentagon, the country’s defence headquarters based in Virginia. The US president is set to sign an executive order on Friday that will allow the Pentagon to be referred to as the “Department of War.“The order permits the title to be used as a secondary designation for the US government’s largest organization.

According to Sky News, it will also allow defence secretary Pete Hegseth to identify himself as the “secretary of war” in official documents and ceremonies.

Hegseth appeared to endorse the move on Thursday night, posting the words “DEPARTMENT OF WAR” on X.Trump had hinted at the change last week during an Oval Office exchange with reporters. “We call it the Department of Defense, but between us, I think we’re gonna change the name,” he said on August 25. He added: “We won the World War 1, World War 2 – it was called the Department of War, and to me, that’s really what it is. Defense is a part of that, but I have a feeling we’re gonna be changing.”The Department of War was originally established by the first US President George Washington to oversee the Army. It retained the name until 1949, when President Harry Truman reorganized the military. Truman had earlier signed the National Security Act of 1947, merging the Department of the Navy, the newly created Department of the Air Force, and the Department of the Army — then known as the Department of War — into the National Military Establishment under a civilian secretary of defense. In August 1949, the establishment was renamed the Department of Defense.The Pentagon renaming effort comes after a series of moves by Hegseth to reverse earlier policies. Among them was the restoration of Confederate-era names like Fort Bragg and Fort Hood, which had been changed under the Biden administration. Hegseth kept the names but reattributed them to other historical figures with the same titles.

Thailand’s influential former prime miniser Thaksin Shinawatra flew out of the country on Thursday, police said, a day before a parliamentary vote for the next prime minister and ahead of a court ruling that could see him jailed.

Many in Thailand spent Thursday evening glued to flight tracking websites, avidly following the path of Thaksin’s private jet.

News that he was at Bangkok’s Don Mueang Airport broke early on Thursday evening, with local media reporting he had been stopped by immigration. He planned to visit Singapore for two days for a medical appointment, Thai outlets reported.

His plane took off after authorities confirmed that he did not have any court order prohibiting him from leaving the country, police said in a statement.

As he left Thailand, social media was flooded with speculation. Many wondered if Thaksin might instead head to Dubai, where he previously lived in self-imposed exile to avoid legal charges for abuse of power and conflicts of interest.

His trip abroad comes just days before a court is due to rule in a legal case that could result in him being sent to jail – and the night before parliament was set to decide who should replace his ousted daughter Paetongtarn Shinawatra as prime minister.

Tens of thousands tracked his plane online, as it flew from Bangkok down through the Gulf of Thailand, then crossing through Malaysia. But rather than stopping in Singapore, the plane suddenly turned west, and looped in two circles.

Thai media interviewed aviation experts on air, analysing the flight path, the amount of fuel carried and its possible destination, as the story led the news bulletins.

“Dear Passenger, your captain is flying in circles to entertain Flightradar viewers, please wave your hands,” joked one social media user. Then the plane began to fly in the direction of India.

Thaksin previously spent more than 15 years in exile to avoid legal charges, and returned to Thailand only in 2023, after striking an uneasy deal with his old enemies in the military royalist establishment. The deal was mutually beneficial, with the two sides forming a government to keep a popular, youthful pro-reform party out of power.

Thaksin was sentenced to eight years in prison upon his return to Thailand, which was commuted to one year by the king. He spent less than 24 hours in prison after citing health problems, instead staying six months in a VIP hospital wing, before being released on parole.

That arrangement is now the subject of a court case, due to be decided next week. It’s possible he could be returned to prison, if judges deem that he has not yet adequately served out his sentence.

Early on Friday morning, Thaksin wrote on social media that he would return to Thailand no later than Monday, and that he would attend court in person on Tuesday to hear the judgment handed down.

Thaksin responded to online speculation by saying he had intended to travel to Singapore for a medical checkup with a doctor he had seen previously while living abroad. “Thai immigration delayed me for nearly two hours,” he said, adding this happened despite him having the right to travel.

The delay prevented him from landing at Singapore’s Seletar Airport, which is used for private jets, as the airport only operates until 10pm, he said.

“Since I couldn’t land in Singapore, I decided to have the pilot change my plans to Dubai. I have long-time orthopedic and pulmonary doctors in Dubai, and I also had the opportunity to visit friends in Dubai whom I hadn’t seen in over two years,” Thaksin wrote, saying his pilot had circled in the sky while waiting for permission from the airport in Dubai.

On social media, speculation about his family’s broader prospects continued. On Friday, Thailand’s parliament is due to vote in a new prime minister, with the royalist conservative politician Anutin Charnvirakul expected to win in a race again Chaikasem Nitisiri, a candidate from Thaksin’s Pheu Thai party.

Donald Trump is to rebrand the US Department of Defense as the Department of War, according to the White House.

The president will today sign an executive order allowing it to be used as a secondary title for the US government’s biggest organisation.

It also means defence secretary Pete Hegseth will be able to refer to himself as the “secretary of war” in official communications and ceremonies.

Mr Hegseth posted the words “DEPARTMENT OF WAR” on X on Thursday night.

Permanently renaming the department would need congressional approval, but the White House said the executive order will instruct Mr Hegseth to begin the process.

The Department of Defense – often referred to colloquially as the Pentagon due to the shape of its Washington HQ – was called the War Department until 1949.

Historians say the name was changed to show the US was focused on preventing conflict following the Second World War and the dawning of the nuclear age.

Mr Trump raised the possibility of a change in June, when he suggested it was originally renamed to be “politically correct”.

His reversion to the more combative title could cost tens of millions, with letterheads and building signs in the US and at military bases around the world potentially needing a refresh.

Joe Biden’s effort to rename nine army bases honouring the Confederacy and Confederate leaders, set to cost $39m (£29m), was reversed by Mr Hegseth earlier this year.

Read more from Sky News:
The proxy war that will redefine US public health
Judge says Trump’s National Guard deployment was illegal

Opponents have already criticised Mr Trump’s move.

“Why not put this money toward supporting military families or toward employing diplomats that help prevent conflicts from starting in the first place?” said Democratic senator Tammy Duckworth, a member of the armed services committee.

Mr Trump’s other federal renaming orders include controversially labelling the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf Of America” and reverting North America’s tallest mountain, Denali in Alaska, to its former name of Mount McKinley.

The Mexican government and Alaska’s Republican senators both rejected the changes.