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EA Magazine: Leafing through a way of life

23.03.2022
European fashionfashion exhibitionfashion magazineItalian fashion

Emporio Armani Magazine: a concept magazine illustrating values and atmospheres of the brand

Armani Silos - THE WAY WE ARE - Courtesy of Giorgio Armani

 

Emporio Armani was created in 1981 to make Armani’s vision – and fashion – accessible to a wider audience. The term Emporio refers to a place where items of clothing and objects from different places and with different values come together and are ready to be rediscovered. A cultural and social phenomenon right from the start, it soon became a container of ideas.

In 1988 Giorgio and Rosanna Armani decided to transform the collection catalogue for the Emporio Armani line into a proper magazine, that could show the garments ‘in context’, alongside high-quality editorial content, to picture the idea of lifestyle the brand itself represented.

EA MAGAZINE FW 1992, STUDIO - ph. Aldo Fallai

The Emporio Armani magazine was first published in 1988, stemming out if the encounter of Giorgio and Rosanna Armani with Bruno Casini, Maria Luisa Frisa and Chiara Galli. Number 0 was actually number 12 of Westuff magazine, a bimonthly magazine based in Florence aimed to deal with the ‘things of the West’, from art to fashion, from architecture to music to nightclubbing, from design to theatre, up to communication.

 

EA MAGAZINE SS 1996, CUBA MI AMOR - ph. Norman Watson

 

The EA Magazine was intended as a concept magazine aimed at contextualising the Emporio Armani collections in the atmospheres that inspired them. Showing what the Emporio Armani way of life was, in the streets of cities around the world as well as in magical places populating Mr. Armani’s imagination, the magazine catered several image makers, writers, performers and cultural icons to shape a world on page that could match the vivid environment in which the brand thrived. The photographers that graced the pages of the 18 issues go from Norman Watson, protagonist of the 1st issue ‘Africa’, to long-time Armani collaborator Aldo Fallai, to the likes of Enrique Badulescu, Robert Erdmann, Dominique Isserman, Peter Lindberg, Randall Mesdon, Karl Markus, Jacques Olivar, Christian Moser, Noburu Morikawa, Ferdinando Scianna. Contributors included Francesco Bonami, Gianni Canova, Fosco Maraini, Richard Martin, Ingrid Sischy, Emilio Tadini, Richard Buckley, Woody Hochswender, Dylan Jones, amongst many others.

EA MAGAZINE SS 1997, THE BODY - ph. Enrique Badulescu

Commenting on the geography of inspiration, the magazine formed an idea of cosmopolite style that is still very much associated with the Emporio Armani line. Every issue was thematic, selecting keywords that could resonates with both locations and concepts. Some titles are: Sud, Europa, Cinema, People, Look, Relations, Cityscapes, Style Atlas, Cuba mi Amor, Aria, The Body.

The last issue, Multiplicity, dated 1997-1998, opened up to the many different trajectories the brand would take in its future developments. The EA Magazine ran for 10 years. In 2017, it came back with a new issue celebrating the label and its achievements.

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Emporio Armani in 2021, Rosanna Armani edited a collector’s edition of the iconic magazine,  THE WAY WE ARE, named after the retrospective exhibition on the brand, curated by Giorgio Armani and currently on view at the Armani / Silos in Milan.