Giorgio Armani: Who'll Succeed Me? Time Will Tell

On the eve of his historic London Fashion Week show, Rebecca Lowthorpe is granted a rare audience with fashion icon Giorgio Armani

Giorgio Armani has a personal fortune of $8.1bn. Can we just think about that for a second: EIGHT. POINT. ONE. BILLION. He is Italy’s most successful designer export and is listed by Forbes as the world’s wealthiest fashion designer. “I’d rather be the most famous,” he laughs – and I don’t think he’s joking. He is 83. EIGHTY THREE. And not only is he still designer-in-chief of his seven clothing lines, oversees the make-up, scent, sunglasses, watches, jewellery, furniture, home furnishings, restaurants, cafés and hotels, he is also the chairman and sole shareholder of his company.

The Italian superpower landed in London – with a 60-strong team (Londoners may have seen EMPORIO ARMANI emblazoned in red lights across County Hall to mark his arrival) – to show his Emporio Armani line at London Fashion Week and celebrate the opening of his new Bond Street store. I was to interview him the day before the show.

I spot his hair first. So white it glows. He is fitting a model with a clutch of helpers around him and another 50 or so Armani-ites bustling about. If it weren’t for the rails of clothes that stretch as far as the eye can see and the table groaning with sparkly accessories, you could be forgiven for thinking they were planning a military coup, not a fashion show. But this is Giorgio Armani: Commander of an army bent on world domination, or at least the takeover of London, for one night only.

We wait, not daring to sit in the wrong greige armchair – ‘we’ being me and Anoushka Bourghesi, global head of Armani’s PR and marketing, who will translate (Armani prefers to conduct interviews in his mother tongue), and his personal assistant Paul Lucchesi. Pretty lowkey where Armani is concerned.