According to Alessandro Sartori, there is a new category of clothing in menswear. The future-facing offspring of sportswear’s fusion with streetwear, it also contains some chromosomes drawn from tailoring—and its elevation is being driven by technological innovation. “So in this new category,” explained Sartori at the Z Zegna Pitti stand this afternoon, “you have technical construction but using high-quality materials, maybe in street style volumes.”
The putative theme of this collection was tennis; Z Zegna was itself integrated with Zegna Sport a few years ago and is still feeling the thematic fallout. However, beyond the pastel leather tennis bags and backpacks, the visors, the very-useful-at-Pitti-today sweatbands, and the tennis court set in the Z Zegna pavilion, this collection was really an illustration of the category Sartori is trying to map out. It’s a category in which ultra-fine, 15-micron wool is thermo-taped in zip-ups, and in which track pants with an outer of treated nylon come lined with a mesh of finely spun silk. Last season, Zegna introduced a washable suit in its proprietary Techmarino: The idea is that you can chuck the garments in your machine, leave them to hang-dry, and they will look like they have come straight from a dry-clean—no need to iron. This season, the concept was extended to jersey knit pieces—track pants and tops—and was to this reviewer no less terrifying. Because, really, who has the cojones to trust a €1,200 outfit to a washing machine? Sartori insisted they come out a dream and that this technologically driven ability to treat precious pieces with less ceremony is part of the emergence of the new category he is talking about.
Fashion is about evolution through the exchange of ideas, hitting them back and forth across the net every season and seeing where the rally takes you. Here, you could see that Z Zegna’s subset of the mainline under Sartori is a turning into a compelling passage of play in itself. From the tailored jackets in four-ply cotton that worked in unforced harmony with the treated pastel technical zip-ups beneath them to the paneled tracksuits lined in merino to the washable (!) nappa track tops, there were plenty of standout shots here. The only problem: What to actually call this new category? As Sartori agreed, that’s something we haven’t quite gotten right yet. Ace collection though.
