Armani understood that movies are advertisements, in their own way—they sell a vision of life, which is almost always better than a vision of reality—and that movie stars are always representatives of that fantasy, whether they’re on the screen or off the clock. John Travolta was already a fan of Armani when he was cast in Gigolo, and he chose forty Armani outfits to wear throughout the film. Though he was replaced by Gere, he became a loyal Armani client to this day, and the wardrobe remained in the film.
Understanding the impact of Gigolo on Armani’s public perception is complicated, so for simplicity’s sake let’s look at the numbers. In 1975, its first year of business, Giorgio Armani S.p.A. did $14,000 in sales; the following year it brought in $90,000. By 1981, the year after Gigolo was released in theaters, company sales were $135 million. Even taking into account the standard rate of growth for a successful line of clothing, this is an unprecedented commercial expansion. A rumor persisting to this day is that, because of Gigolo’s impact on Armani’s sales, Gere never has to pay for a single item of Armani clothing. He can walk into any Armani store, anywhere, and walk out with whatever he wants. Is this true? That’s not really the point of the story.
For the 2000 Vanity Fair article, Gere remembered trying on the all-Armani wardrobe, saying it was “quite stylized, big shoulders and thin waists, thin lapels,” with a single point of reference for the neutral palette: “It was like looking at an old carpet where the natural colors blend and even bleed, as opposed to some of those new carpets made of plastic fibers where the colors are monolithic.” Such depth given to the ordinary is a metaphor for all of Armani’s collections, and the designer’s presence is felt in everything Gere’s character does. One iconic scene shows Julian finishing a line of coke and trying to pick out an outfit for a job, flipping through blazers hanging in the closet and pulling out drawers full of coordinating ties and shirts. When Alice Rawsthorn wrote about the scene for T Magazine, she pointed out that “Gere was perfectly cast for the narcissism of the moment—after disco but before AIDS, when gym culture was taking off and even straight men were losing their hang-ups about being seen to look good…It was a priceless advertisement.”