Armani Signs Three-Year Golden Rooster Awards Partnership in China Push

Giorgio Armani has signed a three-year partnership to support China's Golden Rooster Awards, CEO Giuseppe Marsocci announced on Oct. 22 at the WWD x SKP Global Fashion & Beauty Summit in Wuhan. The deal ties the Italian group to the 37th edition of the film festival and prize, scheduled for mid-November in Xiamen.

The announcement came on a day when Marsocchi also christened a new multilevel Giorgio Armani boutique at SKP Wuhan, anchored by a red lacquer liquor cabinet decorated with fan motifs. The Wuhan openings and the awards sponsorship signal continued retail and marketing investment in a Chinese luxury market that Armani first entered in 1998 with a boutique in Beijing's Peninsula Palace Hotel.

"He was a real pioneer," Marsocci said of the founder, noting the designer's 2004 visit to the Forbidden City, a 2012 One Night Only event in Beijing featuring 15 Armani Privé couture dresses as a tribute to China, and a 2015 spring Privé collection dedicated to bamboo.

What secures the brand after the founder?

Giorgio Armani died last year at age 91, and Marsocci addressed head-on the industry question of whether the house can hold its course without its exacting founder. His answer rested on structure rather than sentiment.

The Giorgio Armani Foundation, he said, will always hold at least 30 percent of the company's shares, regardless of who might take a significant stake in future, and will retain the ability to give direction. In his will, Armani detailed nine founding principles for future stewards of the brand to safeguard, alongside defense of its aesthetic identity.

"Mr. Armani was not about only business. That would have been more difficult to give continuity," Marsocci told the invitation-only audience at the Marriott Wuchang. "Mr. Armani, as we said, is about values, even personal values, even about life."

He framed the succession logic plainly: "Because if it was only about him, it would be quite difficult to continue."

Who holds creative control now?

Marsocci confirmed that the recent appointment of Dario Vitale as creative director of Emporio Armani and Giorgio Armani Accessories marks a structural first: no one outside the Armani family has previously held creative direction at the house.

"Managing creative directors is like managing the superstars in the sport industry: very difficult to manage, but very crucial for the business," he said.

Vitale, who rose to prominence after a one-season stint designing Versace following a long career behind the scenes at Miu Miu, will work under the oversight of Leo Dell'Orco and Silvana Armani, who spent decades beside the founder on menswear and womenswear respectively. "They represent the DNA of the company, so that's why it's important: A new creative direction, but within the support and the path indicated by the brand," Marsocci said.

"Preserving the consistency doesn't mean standing still," he added.

The broader model, in his telling, extends beyond apparel. "Armani is not anymore only products and collections. It's really a way of living. Our business model is not a group of brands; it's a group of experiences under the Armani umbrella," he said, citing hotels, branded residences, restaurants, furniture and chocolates as part of the founder's roadmap.

Why cinema, and why China?

Marsocci positioned film as core brand infrastructure rather than marketing garnish. Armani dressed Richard Gere in the 1980 film "American Gigolo," which established the designer's soft tailoring, and later costumed Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Takeshi Kaneshiro in the 2006 Chinese film "Confessions of Pain." The house collaborated with director Jiang Wen on "Gone with the Bullets" in 2014 and "Hidden Man" in 2018.

"Many luxury brands connect with the film industry, but we started 30 years ago," Marsocci said, showing a slide of George Clooney, Jonathan Bailey, Kendall Jenner and singer Levante in Armani at the most recent Venice Film Festival, where Armani is a major patron.

The Golden Rooster partnership extends that cinema DNA into a Chinese channel with direct relevance to the awards' mid-November audience in Xiamen.

On growth strategy, Marsocci — who has logged nearly 25 years inside the Armani Group — invoked the founder's design ethos. The company's conviction, he said, is that "slow is solid. It means long-term growth and healthy growth," with "essentiality, harmony, balance" as guiding principles.

He also promoted the Chinese-language edition of Armani's 2022 autobiography "Per Amore," relating that the founder "always used to say that if he was not a designer, he would have been a director."

With a foundation lock-up fixed at 30 percent, an outsider installed at Emporio and a three-year cinema sponsorship in China, Armani has set its post-founder course: continuity of values, incremental creative renewal and deepened commitment to one of its oldest markets.