2024 has been a big year for Giorgio Armani; the designer celebrated his 90th birthday earlier this summer, and the year also marks five decades in the business. To mark this milestone, the designer decided to stage his spring 2025 show in New York City later this week, the first time that his main collection has been shown outside of Milan.

This week, Vogue Runway's Nicole Phelps is joined by Jim Moore, GQ's Creative Director at Large, who began working at GQ as an intern in the late '70s just before the release of Paul Schrader's classic film American Gigolo, which starred Richard Gere exclusively wearing Armani's new soft suits, ignited a menswear revolution. "It was the first time we really saw men looking sexy in a suit, in a sexy masculine way," Moore recalls. "The Italians have always been the kings of menswear and they've always had the best fabrics, but the linens were a little bit stiff and the gabardines were a little bit thick. Armani was like, how can we create something that's a little bit more fluid, [that] still drapes closely to the body and moves with the man and has a little bit more of a sensuality?"

But Armani didn't just revolutionize menswear, he also was a pioneer in understanding the power of celebrity as an important marketing tool for a brand, establishing a VIP shopping office in Los Angeles in the late '80s and being one of the first in stacking the front row with hottest stars. "Celebrities love to be dressed by Armani because they see familiar faces and they know that he has world class tailors," Moore explains. "When he opened his outpost in LA, they came running with open arms."

Listen to the latest episode to learn more about how Giorgio Armani has re-invented men's fashion many times throughout the years, and why his style and influence still resonates with the younger generations today.