Italy mourns Giorgio Armani, 'symbol of Italian creativity'

For men, there was a time not too many decades ago, when wearing a T-shirt meant donning a loose-fitting, logo-ed, cotton garment so comfortable it was hard to tell it from something he might have slept in.

Then along came Giorgio Armani. He introduced fitted T-shirts in subtle, nuanced shades — no longer plain grey, but "greige" — and paired them with nonchalant jackets, another of his innovations. Suddenly, casual chic menswear became a global trend, worn by Italians and film and TV stars worldwide.

But nowhere was the the shift in men's attire felt more strongly than in Italy. Here, Armani offered men options not for sloppy T-shirts, but for the constrictive suits and starched shirts that formed the workaday uniform for office stiffs.

"He revolutionized the way men were permitted to