Held in the soaring atrium of Milano Centrale—the largest train station in Europe (by volume, says Wiki)—this Ermenegildo Zegna show invited you to consider the collection right down to a microscopic scale. Despite a panorama that ran to just 44 looks, there was a great deal of scenery to take in, plus plenty of diversions. The destination proved well worth the journey.
Alessandro Sartori said he had chosen this hitherto-unused-for-fashion part of the station because “this is a place where people begin their travels, or finish them. It’s where you meet and connect. And the idea of the connection is to be open, to include, and to connect diversity.”
That was a utopian repurposing of a station long emblematic of the darkly stained ideological moment in Italian history at which this Ulisse Stacchini–designed structure, first opened in 1931, was birthed. Today the station is not just a meeting point for domestic travelers: Many recently arrived immigrants shelter here, mingling with the local skateboarders who relish Stacchini’s authoritarian stone piazza—it’s a melting pot.
This collection, although a highly rarified exercise, was in its way a melting pot too. Sartori is is a deep-thinking, at-his-roots tailor who has never been afraid to lean into the prevailing winds of taste—a gift that is helping Zegna weather the storm that is so badly buffeting many of its sartorial brother brands. By considering the technical yen of the young through a prism of couture-level precision he is coming up with some very interesting propositions. Tonight 25 percent of the collection—pieces in nylon, cashmere, and wool—was not only recycled from Zegna factory offcuts, but created to be fully recyclable in a future incarnation. Those three-straps-at-the-calf pants (ostentatiously technical) and short-hemmed outerwear with detachable collars worn under more traditional-looking topcoats patterned with abstract hieroglyphs in rubber tape were part of a wardrobe designed to be infinitely modular. Like a Swiss Army knife, these clothes were packed with cuffs, straps, and poppered addenda that allow the wearer to change his silhouette without swapping his garments.
Pieces that appeared to be traditional suiting were in fact upgrades from it, a bit like those iPhone cases that looked like cassette tapes that were popular a couple of years ago. Single-piece unconstructed jackets came with hook and eye fastenings in bicolored twill, and impressively rendered jacquard “suits” flexed effortlessly around the bodies of the models as they strode across the concourse. Hats included single-piece rabbit and wool felt caps by Cappellificio Cervo, the historic Biella-based hatmaker that was purchased by Zegna in January of last year, and what looked like leather corduroy baseball caps with advent-calendar-flap details. Another “suit,” one-and-a-half-breasted, was irregularly woven from threads of paper, leather, cashmere, and wool: definitely dry-clean-only. There was a backpack with an inbuilt wireless speaker—boom box 2.0—and a sort-of Lego-like system of click-together portage, leather-clad and round-cornered, that allowed you to build your own commuter harness.
Not unlike the building it was held in, sometimes this collection veered to the austere in its almost baroquely intricate seriousness—its look-to-the-future monumentalism. Gentler asides included the neo-futurist embroideries of dynamically rendered commuters on sweats and knit merino overcoats, the tie-dye shaved-calf pullovers, and the cracked-leather and shearling details on Sartori’s excellent sneakers—which were worn by every single man (and apart from Winnie Harlow, they were all men) on the front row across from me. But the ambition and industry at work here was undeniable.
