MILAN — Giorgio Armani believes the time has come to map out his values and the designer will unveil a new site with this name on Earth Day. At the same time, Armani revealed that he has appointed his nephew, Andrea Camerana, as sustainability managing director.
“I believe that a designer and entrepreneur like myself has responsibilities and must be an example,” said Armani. “I have always based my work on authentic and solid values. I have done it designing timeless objects, pure and essential, that stem from the idea that less is best, made to last in time, and I have always turned my attention to people, convinced that a company must give back and not only take from our planet, which we must look after.”
Case in point
In April 2020, Armani sent an open letter to WWD musing on the possibility of the pandemic yielding to slower fashion and long-lasting designs, which he has long embraced, and to collections aligned with the seasons.
“I think fashion can contribute to the renovation that is taking place in many ways. Values count, corporate responsibility is central for us and with this site I wish to share an invitation to build, all together, a more responsible system,” said Armani.
Camerana, in his first interview, and the designer told WWD exclusively that with Armani/Values “the intention is to engage the entire organization at a global level in the implementation of the sustainability strategy, because we think it’s fundamental to raise the level of awareness on these issues.” Values will also post the group’s annual sustainability report.
Camerana has contributed to creating a sustainability strategic committee to analyze and integrate the objectives in the company’s strategies “through an inclusive approach that engages all our people, our suppliers and our clients, and, naturally, the extended community. The environmental challenges, the inclusion and the well-being of people, the circularity of our business, the eco-design are some of the priorities on which we have focused from Day One,” said Camerana, who is the son of Armani’s sister Rosanna.
A graduate in agricultural science, after working for Auchan and Galbani, Camerana joined the Armani Group in 2000. A counselor and formerly a licensing director at his uncle’s fashion house, he exited the group in 2014, while remaining on the board. He has often been mentioned as a possible successor to Armani and, as a relative of the Agnelli family (his father, Carlo, was the cousin of Gianni and Umberto Agnelli), he has been seen as a link with the Exor holding company when rumors last year swirled around its potential interest in the fashion house.
Camerana said corporate social responsibility practices at the Armani Group were set in motion a few years ago and that he is now “tasked with evolving the policies in a new direction of sustainability, connecting CSR more closely to the vertex of the company. In this view, we have hired a director of sustainability integrating sustainability in the company’s business strategies. The team is growing.”
