Throughout the 1980s and ‘90s we saw the rise of ‘indie’. Indie music, indie flicks, indie magazines, indie fashion. While the word was first associated with the UK’s alternative music chart – for records released on independent as opposed to major record labels – of course, it gradually emerged as a broader badge of honour, loosely implying that independence was for artsy outsiders; and ultimately became a generic term employed to describe pretty much anything that wished to express more soulful values.

And along the way, indie hijacked independent.

But why should independent mean small? Why does willfully reigning in one’s ambitions mean you’re more soulful? Surely independent means being self-sufficient, individualistic, headstrong… (we know it does because we’ve just looked it up in the dictionary).

There’s certainly nothing indie about Giorgio Armani’s independence. Our 80-year-old cover star epitomises the idea that independence can mean power. And when you sit down with Mr Armani (and get Juergen Teller to snoop around his personal residence) you soon understand that, besides the obvious trappings of owning his 40-year-old global empire outright, what fuels him is a stubborn refusal to dilute his ideas or be swayed by influence.

The same could be said for Cathy Horyn, probably fashion’s most-feared – and respected – critic, and the subject of this issue’s long-form interview. (It turns out that Cathy’s father was himself a newspaper reporter, who made a living covering public executions in Ohio penitentiaries. Now we wouldn’t want to presume there’s a link, but…) And then there’s Hermès, the original independent luxury house.

We took a look inside their ‘colour kitchen’, the psychedelic service that transforms their silk carrés into a global money-making machine (reportedly one sold every 25 seconds).

Indie never felt so big.