The Power Suit
A deconstructed suit for women with broad, padded shoulders, minimal internal structure, and a loose, unconstricting silhouette in luxurious neutral fabrics — a garment that combined masculine authority with Armani's signature Italian softness. The American version, promoted by designer Donna Karan's "Seven Easy Pieces" system, was typically worn with a silk blouse and heels, creating a uniform for the professional woman that communicated ambition, competence, and a careful negotiation between male professional codes and female identity.
The power suit was the defining garment of the 1980s and the visual expression of women's mass entry into senior management and professional life — the costume in which a generation of women simultaneously asserted authority and navigated institutions designed by and for men. Richard Gere's wardrobe in American Gigolo (1980) established Armani as the defining designer of a new kind of minimal luxe masculinity, while Melanie Griffith's padded shoulders in Working Girl (1988) crystallized the female version's cultural moment.
Armani developed the power suit as American and British corporate culture was being reshaped by Reaganism and Thatcherism — an ideological shift that valorized individual ambition, corporate achievement, and the visible markers of success. The suit's expensive fabrics and impeccable construction were signals of professional status at a moment when that status was newly available to women who had previously been excluded from senior roles.