The One Heartbreaking Failure Giorgio Armani Confessed To Having In His Life
For a man who wielded an immense amount of power, his regrets were surprisingly relatable.
Obatala-photography | Shutterstock On September 4, 2025, news broke that the iconic Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani had passed away at the age of 91. It left the fashion industry, which Armani had devoted most of his life to, heartbroken. Armani was a true visionary known for revolutionizing the way both men and women dressed. Many admired him for the way he truly worked his way up from the bottom.
In his BBC News obituary, it was reported that he “resisted external investment,” unlike many other fashion labels, and kept all of his company and his capital for himself. He was believed to have a net worth of $13 billion. Perhaps it is Armani’s immense success that makes the failure he confessed to even more heartbreaking. Money and prestige can only help you so much, apparently.
Armani once revealed that his greatest failure was losing his partner.
If you asked a man of Armani’s caliber what he considered his greatest failure, you would probably expect him to bring up a collection that was not as successful as he had hoped, or a design that did not take off the way he thought it would. Surely he would not share something deeply personal.
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That’s simply not the Armani the public knew. Instead, we knew him as the man who designed suits and dresses so perfect that they outfitted everyone from movie characters to Hollywood stars. But his obituary described him as “an intensely private man,” so, really, it makes sense that we knew him for his professional life and nothing more.
Still, in a 2001 interview, Armani was asked what he felt was his greatest failure. The question was framed around his career, but the designer took it in a different direction. He replied, “Not being able to stop my partner dying.” Armani’s long-time partner, Sergio Galeotti, passed away in 1985 from an “AIDS-related illness.”
Armani and Galeotti had quite the love story that spanned their personal and professional lives.
Armani began his career working at a department store in Milan called La Rinascente in the 1960s. In short order, he was working for designer Nino Cerruti, who asked him to basically re-do the way his company operated.
He met Galeotti in 1966. At the time, Galeotti was an architecture apprentice, but he left his job to work with Armani, whom he believed in implicitly. He was the one who encouraged Armani to create his own label, selling his Volkswagen to secure money for the business.
“He helped me believe in my own work, my energy,” Armani said of Galeotti. After his death, Armani thought of retiring, but he knew that’s not what Galeotti would want him to do, so he persevered.
It may seem like wealthy people have all they could ever need, but they deal with hard things just like the rest of us do.
It’s easy to look at the rich and famous and assume they have it all. Surely you can fix any problem if you have enough money and name recognition. Armani’s sad story is proof that this is not true.
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You can’t buy your way out of sadness or grief. U.K. mental health charity Mind explained that feeling depressed can actually make it hard for you to manage your finances at all, which could be detrimental. Additionally, if you engage in retail therapy and spend money to get a temporary high when you’re sad, your bank account can take a hit from that, too. Basically, being sad is not good for your wallet.
Many people love to closely follow the lives of successful people and imagine what it would be like to be in their position, but you never know what pain someone is dealing with. Armani’s loss seemed to stay with him for decades, even though there’s truly nothing he could have done to prevent it. His money and fame did not make him superhuman. That’s simply not possible.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
