Emporio Armani

Emporio Armani was born in 1981 as a "diffusion" line of Giorgio Armani, the high-fashion house the designer from Piacenza had founded a few years earlier, in 1975, together with his partner Sergio Galeotti. The idea was to make Armani's elegant, measured language accessible to a younger audience and at more affordable prices than the main line, without giving up the Italian taste that had made the designer famous: thus was born, with its own eagle as a symbol, a brand designed to accompany an entire wardrobe, from clothing to accessories, watches included.

As with many fashion houses of the period, Emporio Armani's entry into watchmaking did not come through its own manufacture but through a licensing agreement. In 1997 Fossil, Inc. signed a deal with the Armani group to design, produce and distribute Emporio Armani-branded watches worldwide, launching what Europa Star described at the time as a deliberate "fashion" positioning rather than fine watchmaking: collections with a loosely vintage flavor, sold at accessible prices, distributed both through Fossil's commercial network and through Emporio Armani boutiques around the world. The agreement has been renewed several times over the years — a ten-year extension was announced in 2014 — and Fossil Group still describes it today, more than twenty years after the first signing, as one of the longest-running licensing relationships in its portfolio.

Over the years the watch catalogue has expanded beyond the original quartz chronographs: since 2014 there has been a more refined tier, "Emporio Armani Swiss Made", with certified Swiss quartz movements, and since 2016 also a line of connected smartwatches. It should also be distinguished from its younger sibling Armani Exchange (A|X), the younger, sportier brand in the Armani galaxy that since 2008 has had its own separate watch license, also with Fossil Group, and which is treated on Chronopedia as a separate entry.