Giorgio Armani is to add to his already impressive IMDb profile – he has been collaborating on film projects since 1980’s American Gigolo, when he outfitted Richard Gere for the movie – with a new US blockbuster thriller called Paranoia.  

Whereas other designers have branched out into directing and starring in film – like Tom Ford, who directed A Single Man, and Marc Jacobs, who acts in Disconnect – Armani has stuck firmly with the costume departments, shaping the aesthetic of a string of Hollywood movies, including Tim Burton’s Batman, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight and Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. 

He was also the first designer to realise the symbiotic relationship that could exists between fashion and film stars, dressing a raft of actors like Michelle Pfeiffer and Jodie Foster for events in the late 1980s and early 1990s, beginning a process that is now completely commonplace.

He is, however, changing tack slightly with Paranoia, which stars Harrison Ford, Amber Heard, Gary Oldman and Liam Hemsworth, because as well as designing costumes for a newly bald Ford, he has collaborated with the film’s production designer, David Brisbin, to incorporate Armani Casa furniture into the film.  

The film – which is set in the tech world, not the nerdy one populated by people who were good at maths at school, but a super-slick one where everybody has houses that look like hotels and muscles that ripple under expensive shirts – will feature sofas, lamps, tables and chairs from the Armani Casa line, and Armani will even earn himself a production credit for his trouble.

He is adamant that the product placement is completely apt for the film, telling Women’s Wear Daily, ‘Collaborating with David Brisbin on his vision for this movie provided me with the opportunity to showcase Armani Casa on film in a way that is absolutely believable and appropriate to the story.’

Watching the trailer, his statement rings true but it’s an interesting shift – can we expect more designers to start working with directors and production designers to create an entire world for the characters? Nancy Meyers’s famous movie kitchens would quickly cease to be the most covetable movie interiors if there were entire films designed in collaboration with the home lines from Hermes, Rick Owens and Maison Martin Margiela…