GIORGIO ARMANI, NOW 84, spends a great deal of time shuttling between his nine residences throughout Europe, the United States and the Caribbean. Unsurprisingly for someone whose exacting, understated aesthetic has profoundly shaped both fashion and the culture at large, he likes things to be just so in each of them. One of the reasons he keeps such a vast array of homes is that he doesn’t like to stay in hotels; he is easily upset by a sink mounted too high or an unnecessarily oily bruschetta. Decorative flamboyance dismays him, as does poor execution.

In view of such fabled perfectionism, not to mention the sharp lines and hushed neutrals that define both his clothing and home décor collections, the weekend compound he has owned for nearly 30 years in Broni — an unremarkable industrial town about an hour and a half south of Milan — is nothing you would expect.