Giorgio Armani, who has died at the age of 91, was the first designer since Coco Chanel to bring about a lasting change in the way people dress.

Born in a pre-war era of rigid traditions and styles, his creations followed - and helped make possible - increasing social fluidity in the latter half of the 20th Century.

Chiefly, he will be remembered for reinventing the suit - feminising it for men and popularising it for women.

Armani took away the restrictions and confinements of stiffer styles that went before him - making men feel sophisticated and women empowered in the workplace.

Newspapers hailed him the "first post-modern designer". In many ways, he was a revolutionary.

Giorgio Armani was born in Piacenza, northern Italy, on 11 July 1934.

His family's comfortable middle-class lifestyle was destroyed by the war and, with food hard to find, his earliest memory was hunger.

Armani played with unexploded artillery shells in the street, until one suddenly went off. He was severely burned and a close friend was killed.

"War," he later said, "taught me that not everything is glamorous."

As a young man, Armani drifted.

In 1956, he began a medicine degree - but dropped out after three years and joined the army.

Swiftly tiring of life in the military, he found a job as a window dresser at La Rinascente - a department store in Milan - where he moved swiftly through the ranks.

Most designers learn their trade as apprentices or at fashion school - but Armani's education took place on the shop floor.

He learned what fabrics the customers liked, and went to the textile mills to buy them. He became an expert in how the cloth was constructed, and used his knowledge to perfect the tailoring.

Soon, Armani was working for Nino Cerruti - an influential haute couture designer. Within months, Cerruti asked him to restructure the company's approach.

The 1960s middle classes could not afford haute couture, but yearned for a stylish, distinctive look of their own.

With his expertise in fabrics, Armani provided an answer. His fine cloths made possible a menswear range with neat, precise cuts that could be manufactured at scale.

Its distinctively Italian style began to influence the way the fashionable dressed.

In 1966, Armani met Sergio Galeotti, a young apprentice architect. Galeotti soon abandoned his own career and started to work at his lover's side.

With immense confidence in Giorgio's ability, he encouraged Armani to set up on his own.

Galeotti masterminded the business side of the company - and sold his Volkswagen car to raise seed capital.

They started small - their first office was so dingy that Armani took the shades off the lamps in order to see the fabrics. But their work was nothing short of a revolution in fashion.

In broad terms, Armani softened menswear and hardened womenswear.

Men's suits were made softer and more sensual.

It reflected a change in the way men saw themselves in the 1960s, but it had not yet been captured in fashion.

And with more women entering the workplace, Armani spotted an opportunity.

"I realised that they needed a way to dress that was equivalent to that of men," he said. "Something that would give them dignity in their work life."

With Armani's elegantly tailored power suits, women were offered an alternative to the stiff and stuffy dresses their mothers had worn to work. They exuded femininity, but were a powerful statement of equality.

In 1978, the company signed an agreement with clothes manufacturer GFT - which gave it the ability to produce luxury ready-to-wear clothes in volume.

At the same time, Armani pulled off a huge marketing coup.

He won a contract to dress Richard Gere in American Gigolo. In almost every scene of the 1980 film, Gere's handsome fantasy-figure form appears head-to-foot in Armani.

It was Armani's vision projected by the power of Hollywood - and publicity that money couldn't buy.

He went on to dress stars on the Oscar night red carpet, and design costumes for dozens of film and television shows: notably The Untouchables and 1980s crime series Miami Vice.

Within a decade, he had become the biggest selling European designer in the United States. As a result, Milan emerged as serious commercial and creative force in world fashion - second only to Paris.

He moved to extend his brand. He launched both Armani Jeans and Emporio Armani - and a deal with L'Oreal added fragrances to his arsenal.

He went on to introduce glasses, sportswear, cosmetics and accessories. Now, there was an entire lifestyle - under one label - to which the fashionable could aspire. GQ magazine described it as the "total look".

In 1985, Sergio Galeotti died of an Aids-related illness at the age of 40.

An intensely private man, Armani retreated into himself and considered retirement. Eventually, he decided to persevere rather than "abandon all of Sergio's hopes".

Paying tribute to his long-term personal and business partner, Armani said that "he helped me believe in my own work, in my energy".

In a rare interview in 2001, Armani was asked about the greatest failure of his career. "Not being able to stop my partner dying," he answered.

With no family to distract him, he dedicated his life to expanding his empire.

While fashion conglomerates bought up other brands, Armani resisted external investment.

Instead, he built the company into the vast global business it is today - and retained control of its finances and creativity. It made him a multi-billionaire.

In 2000, the Guggenheim Museum in New York hosted an exhibition of his work.

It recognised Armani's powerful influence on social change in the previous century - and boldly stated that "design could be art".

He stopped using models with low body mass indexes when one - Ana Carolina Reston - died of anorexia.

Hotel design was added to the portfolio with the opening of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai in 2010. Armani himself designed the interiors.

A keen sports fan, he also designed suits for Chelsea and the England football squad - and made the uniforms for Italy's Olympic team in 2012.

He had a very public falling-out with US Vogue editor Anna Wintour when she failed to attend the launch of his new season in 2014.

She claimed a diary conflict, but was rumoured to have remarked that "the Armani era is over".

As he entered his tenth decade, Armani continued to present new ranges on the catwalks of Paris and Milan.

In March 2025, he said his Milan show aimed to pour oil on the troubled waters of global politics.

"I wanted to imagine new harmony," he said, "because I believe that is what we all need."

In person, he was trim and business-like.

New York magazine described him as "notoriously disciplined" and "dedicated to a self-control and self-containedness that can come off as coolness".

Each morning, Armani would do lengths in his swimming pool. It was 50 yards long but just one yard wide - and contained just enough water to facilitate the laps.

To some, the design of the pool encapsulated the designer's single-minded approach to life and business. It was minimalist, precise, and engineered for a purpose.

Throughout his career, his styles remained in lockstep with changing society.

The acute sense of social direction came from Armani's early experience on the shop floor of that Milanese department store.

There, it was the customers who mattered - and a good designer ensured he adapted to their changing needs.

For 65 years, Armani dedicated himself to that task. And it amassed him a fortune estimated by Forbes at $13bn (£10bn).

"I'm never satisfied," he once told a reporter.

"In fact, as someone who is forever dissatisfied and obsessive in his search for perfection, I never give up until I've achieved the results I want."

There is a palpable sense of shock on the faces of people gathering at the site of a major funicular crash in the Portuguese capital as they hear of how a three-year-old German boy was pulled alive from the wreckage - a lucky survivor of Wednesday's terrible crash which killed 16 people.

The boy's father was reportedly killed and his mother injured in the crash. It is still unclear what caused the crash, in which more than 20 other people were injured, including many foreign nationals.

The capital's public transport operator, Carris, said all funiculars would be inspected and that it had launched an independent probe into the incident.

Police and prosecutors are also investigating the crash.

One local resident told the BBC she was "still processing" what had happened as she walked past the site of the crash, where the wreckage of the funicular that had derailed and crashed into a building lay on the ground.

"It's very, very sad," she said.

Others gathered and took photos of the wreckage, or stood silently watching. Two tourists from Singapore said they had been scheduled to ride the funicular on Wednesday but had changed their plans at the last minute.

"It's scary… Who knows, we might have been on this one," one said. "It changes your perspective on life. You just don't expect something like this to happen."

'People started to jump from the windows'

Tour guide Mariana Figueiredo was among those at the scene of the crash on Wednesday evening. She said she had been traumatised by what she had witnessed.

Ms Figueiredo said she heard a large crash and rushed to the scene, close to where her TukTuk was parked.

"In five seconds I was there," she said. "People started to jump from the windows inside the funicular at the bottom of the hill. Then I saw another one [further up] that was already crushed.

"I started to climb the hill to help the people but when I got there the only thing I could hear was silence."

Ms Figueiredo said that when she and others started to pull the roof off of the funicular, they saw dead bodies inside.

She said she witnessed children being rescued, and tried to help people with broken bones and to calm those in distress.

"A lot of people were crying around me. They were very frightened. I was trying to calm them down."

A man, who was on another funicular at the bottom of the hill at the time of the crash, told reporters that he thought he was going to die.

"No matter how many more years I live, I'll never take the funicular again," he said.

Police have not officially named any of the dead or injured, but said at a news conference on Thursday that they believed two Canadians, one German and one Ukrainian national were thought to be among the dead.

This followed from an earlier update in which police said they believed five Portuguese, two South Korean and one Swiss national had been identified.

The Portuguese transport union said funicular brake guard André Jorge Gonçalves Marques was among those killed.

Charity Santa Casa da Misericórdia, whose employees used the funicular for their work commute, confirmed that four of their workers were killed in the accident.

One employee, Valdemar Bastos, told the BBC that staff at the charity, located on top of a steep hill, often used the funicular along with tourists and elderly people.

"I have always felt safe," he said. "I never thought this could happen."

On Thursday, the head of Lisbon's public transport operator, Carris, said that all funiculars in the city would be closed until technical inspections had been carried out.

Pedro Gonçalo de Brito Aleixo Bogas told reporters that the Gloria line would reopen in the future with a new carriage.

He said the company had increased its spending on maintaining funiculars - which had operated correctly since 2007 - but added that the cost of maintaining them had more than doubled over the past 10 years.

The findings from the investigation would be released soon, Dr De Brito Bogas said, but declined to say when this would happen.

Footage shared on social media showed the crumpled yellow funicular overturned on the cobblestone street and people running from the area as smoke filled the air.

Several passengers trapped in the wreckage had to be freed by emergency responders, local authorities said.

Officials in Lisbon had initially put the death toll at 17, however that number was later revised down to 16 after they discovered a person who died in hospital overnight had been counted twice.

A funicular is a type of railway system that allows travel up and down steep slopes, and in Lisbon they are a crucial means of navigating the city's steep, cobbled streets.

The city's funicular railways - Glória, Lavra, Bica and Graça - are a popular tourist attraction, as the bright yellow tram-like vehicles snake through the often-narrow, hilly streets.

Glória was opened in 1885 and electrified three decades later.

It travels some 275m (900ft) from Restauradores, a central city square, up to the picturesque streets of Bairro Alto. The journey takes just three minutes.

The two carriages on the Glória route are attached to opposite ends of a haulage cable, which is pulled by electric motors.

As one carriage travels downhill, its weight lifts the other, allowing them to ascend and descend simultaneously, reducing the energy needed to transport them.

The second, intact carriage could be seen just metres from the wreckage at the bottom of the hill.

Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr defended his oversight of US health agencies in a fiery hearing on Thursday as lawmakers grilled him over his vaccine policies and other sweeping agency changes.

During three hours of testimony, Democrats accused Kennedy of lying and restricting Americans' access to vaccines, while several Republican senators also raised concerns.

The hearing comes a week after Kennedy fired the leader of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a clash over his vaccine policies.

Since taking the helm at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in February, Kennedy has made a number of changes that have alarmed health experts.

In June, he fired every member of a panel of independent vaccine experts that issues recommendations for immunisations.

Public health experts raised concerns about the qualifications of the members - several of whom are vaccine critics - appointed in their place.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published on Thursday, Susan Monarez, the former head of the CDC, said she was fired because she refused to rubber-stamp vaccine recommendations from the panel.

During Thursday's hearing, the Senate Finance Committee's ranking member, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, pressed Kennedy on her accusations.

The health secretary denied her allegation, saying he told Ms Monarez to resign after asking her if she was a "trustworthy" person. He said she responded "no".

The vaccine advisory panel was one of several of Kennedy's policy changes that lawmakers brought up during the hearing, leading to clashes.

As Senator Maggie Hassan accused the health secretary of restricting access to vaccines, Kennedy angrily responded: "You're just making stuff up."

"Sometimes when you make an accusation, it's kind of a confession, Mr Kennedy," Hassan said.

Lawmakers repeatedly questioned Kennedy over his stance on the Covid-19 vaccine, including Senator Mark Warner, who asked the health leader how many lives the shots had saved during the pandemic.

Kennedy said he did not know because of "data chaos" under the Biden administration.

"You've had this job for eight months, and you don't know the data about whether vaccines saved lives?" Warner asked.

Kennedy later said the vaccine saved "quite a few" lives.

Republicans took a more measured tone with Kennedy, with some praising his leadership and others asking him to clarify what they described as contradictory remarks.

Senator Thom Tillis - who said before the hearing that he planned to ask Kennedy why his actions weren't "matching up" with his promises - gave him a list of questions to answer at a later time.

The Republican lawmaker noted that Kennedy had accused some scientists of lying in his responses during the hearing.

"I'd just like to see the scientific evidence of that," he said.

The toughest Republican questioning came from Senator Bill Cassidy, a doctor who gave a key vote to confirm Kennedy only after he gave him assurances that he would uphold several US vaccine policies.

Cassidy pressed Kennedy on his stance on Covid-19 immunisations, accusing him of restricting access to the shots because of conflicting recommendations from health agencies.

Under Kennedy's leadership, the US Food and Drug Administration recently approved a round of Covid booster shots for fewer groups, only for adults 65 and older and people with medical conditions.

"Effectively, we are denying people vaccines," Cassidy said.

"You're wrong," Kennedy responded.

Kennedy's hearing comes a week after he fired 600 CDC employees in addition to Ms Monarez.

Just weeks before, a gunman fired 500 rounds at the CDC's headquarters in Atlanta, killing a police officer. Investigators say the shooter blamed the Covid-19 vaccine for making him suicidal.

Afterwards, hundreds of HHS officials wrote a letter to Kennedy, accusing him of fueling mistrust in public health officials by spreading misinformation.

They pointed to his statements about vaccines, including the Covid-19 shot and the immunisation against measles.

This year, the US has seen its worst outbreak of measles in decades.

While Kennedy has endorsed the vaccine as the best way to prevent the spread of measles, he has also made false claims about the safety and efficacy of the shot.