The cocktail schmooze after this show resembled a fantasy Fellini-shot “before” segment from the ultimate Italianate medicated shampoo ad: a dense crowd of models, captains of industry, and celebrities, all of whose heads and shoulders were liberally sprinkled with chunky flakes of dandruff. They weren’t, of course: Alessandro Sartori had recruited the Swiss landscape artist Thomas Flechtner to install a set of apparently freshly fallen but artificial snow around an irregular line of white plinths, all set within the surgically austere Neo-Brutalist hall of Milan’s Bocconi University. When it was kicked up by the models, or sprinkled from the concrete roof, it landed on us.
But so what: This staged but sincere setup—the natural and organic within a human-hewn context—complemented the clothes that Sartori’s diverse 45-strong cast tramped through the “snow” in.
Like the Z Zegna collection presented at Pitti earlier this week, this show was partially inspired by the Oasi Zegna, the Alpine nature reserve around the family company’s home base. The crisscross pattern on a vibrant rust-and-violet jacket and on a light-blue-on-navy top coat was taken from a photo of bird footprints in the snow. Other pieces featured much more figurative embroideries of treescapes taken in Zegna’s mountain territory.
A major part of the collection were the sports coats and top coats in double-faced Oasi cashmere, a new fabric whose dyes were all chemical-free and derived from natural ingredients. Thus the rust in that blazer came from tea and tobacco, and the violet against it was alchemized from crocus flower. All dye was color-fixed without the use of inorganic substances. These were clothes which, like the Oasi, were painstakingly stewarded to look as natural in their beauty as possible.
Yet there was most definitely a guiding hand in charge of this landscape, its mark of ownership the conjoined triple-X logo of Zegna couture. Abstracted, this signature was indented into the pile of shaved black shearling blousons, imposed as decoration on camel cashmere blousons, and used as a texturized pattern in a double-face camel-on-navy intarsia sweater. It was even incorporated into the tread of tractor-soled Goodyear welted sneakers and boots to ensure every Zegna-shod footstep left a branded souvenir of its passing in Flechtner’s snow.
Sartori made a strong play for a slim but enveloping partially double-breasted—“strictly, it’s one-and-a-third breasted”—jacket shape, detachable waistcoats, and removable belts in coats that could cinch on the outside, the inside, half-and-half, or not at all. Long felted cashmere coats and even a magnificent cashmere jumpsuit featured semi-articulated pockets with different-color inserts at the seam. There was a lovely matte cotton corduroy used in color-blocked suiting, while pattern was provided via monochrome or yellow-on-black check suits delivered in a brushed alpaca mix, treated both before and after construction to abstract and soften the contrasting colors with blur and texture. Wool and mohair quilted jackets and jumpsuits were packed with wool rather than feathers.
Accessories included teardrop-shaped bags in herringbone weave leather and a collaborative headphone with Master & Dynamic. The models sometimes carried old paperbacks by Hemingway and Ginsberg. Tapered pants—the bottom half of Sartori’s blouson-topped substitute ensemble for the tailored suit—were cinched with snaps at the ankle. Other pants teamed with tailoring featured a double line of pin-tucked seams on the outside of the legs. This was an elaborately constructed oasis of out-there luxury menswear, perfect for any well funded man in search of shelter from the norm.
