Appunti sul regno (nudo) della moda Re Giorgio e la biopolitica dell’eleganza.

The article reads the death of Giorgio Armani as a biopolitical event that marks the end of a historical cycle in Italian fashion and media modernity. Rather than simply celebrating a designer, it treats “Re Giorgio” as a dispositif that has governed bodies, subjectivities and aesthetic norms. By reconstructing Armani’s “imperative of sobriety” as a regime of controlled fluidity, the text shows how his minimalism functioned as a technology of normalisation: a power dressing that disciplined male and female managers into neutral, efficient interfaces for global capitalism. It situates this dispositif within the rise of commercial television and Hollywood cinema, where Armani’s aesthetic became a visual code that linked garments, media images and aspirations of national modernisation in Italy. At the same time, the article highlights the structural paradox of Armani’s empire, combining measured essentialism with expansive brand extension across lines, licences and accessories. Finally, it argues that Armani’s passing exposes the “nakedness” of today’s fashion system, dominated by financial conglomerates, digital volatility and algorithmic micro-trends. With the disappearance of one of the last autonomous sovereigns of fashion, the industry appears stripped of its symbolic veils, forcing us to question which new aesthetic regime will be able to govern bodies, screens and everyday life.