"All the women of my generation, including Hillary Clinton, were wearing jeans in the 1960s. But where do you go from Woodstock?"

"How do you professionalize that look when those women start entering the work force? You professionalize it by wearing a feminized suit from Armani."

Said costume designer and historian Deborah Nadoolman Landis, quoted in "Giorgio Armani, Fashion’s Master of the Power Suit, Dies at 91/He created a male uniform whose feminized form won favor with women. An alliance with movie stars made his name all but synonymous with red-carpet dressing" (NYT).

Longtime readers of this blog may remember the time I bought an Armani suit. It was 2008, and I seriously believed it was going to be infinitely useful:

Here's the Giorgio Armani store on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, where a lovely saleswoman sees that I admire that jacket trimmed with fur and feathers and says something to me — "It's fox" — that prompts me to ask a question about sizes and the long-nurtured desire for the perfect pantsuit.

I have — a thousand times — wished I'd bought the quirky jacket instead of what I'd thought would be so practical. I'd have worn the jacket a hundred times a year since then —1700 times — and I have worn the suit exactly... never. And that's the argument in favor of impulse buying.