Clothes are a personal environment, manufactured in an industrial environment, that is part of the environment at large—the world we share. Today Alessandro Sartori used the opportunity presented by the Milan Digital Fashion Week to join the dots between that hierarchy of environments and propose a relationship between them that is not oppositional, but mutually sustaining.
The environment at large for this “phygital” presentation was Ermenegildo Zegna’s HQ in Trivero, two hours northeast of Milan. Its central facilities—a towering edifice of mills, factories, and logistics topped by a Zegna-branded chimney—lie within a nature reserve named Oasi Zegna in which the company has planted half a million trees since its foundation in 1910.
The show, which was streamed, started firmly in the digital domain. A wall of hedgerow evaporated to reveal a grassy hilltop runway, and the beginning of an approximately six-minute segment that had been pre-recorded in the last two weeks. This section contained around two-thirds of the collection and showed the models navigating their way through the nature reserve that is one product of Ermenegildo Zegna’s business.
Through forest, across lawns, and up stone paths they marched what Sartori said was in total a 3-kilometer route. Slowly their drone-shot surroundings became more cultivated, their pathways more tended, until they rounded a corner into a passage that led inside the mill itself. Here they passed through antique wooden-drawered archives of fabrics past, and through the massed ranks of spinning machines set to weave the fabrics of the future. Then out again into the garden, and the action cut to live.
We were on the roof of the mill for the beginning of a three-minute-or-so final section of the collection and finale, at the end of which the drone went up and up and up to reveal the huge Zegna facility and the rolling countryside around it. The 42 models and small cluster of backstage staff—plus Sartori—looked tiny.
At a preview in Milan beforehand, Sartori said that he wanted the clothes to transmit “lightness, freedom, and a sense of pleasure. We want these garments to be kept for multiple seasons and multiple usage. And there is also meaning through construction, and care of fabrics and the environment.” The typical rate of fabric wastage when building a collection, Sartori added, is 50%. Yet in this collection, 35% of the fabrics are recycled. He is confident that soon he will hit a 50% recycled rate, thus establishing a sustainably self-renewing ratio of raw materials wasted to reclaimed.
The clothes were inspired by both the shades and textures of the Oasi (rich green tie-dye on leather bags and grosgrain-edged half-zip recycled cotton smocks) and the sartorial heritage of the house (lightly structured recycled silk mohair tailoring in shirting stripe patterns). Knits were left puckered with unstitched slashes to replicate the foliage surrounding the looms that wove them.
Sartori fronted hybrid shirt/jackets in recycled wool with large flap pockets and seamed panels to emphasize the drawstrings within, and to create pieces that could serve both in business meeting and back yard. These were vented at each side, to free up movement, as were the hems of the pants worn below them.
Much lighter were the deconstructed suits in wool or linen in dark olive or light tan that featured soft raglan shoulder constructions and pockets inserted to connect with the darting. These were worn with sash-necked silk jersey long-sleeve T-shirts. A one-and-a-half breasted jacket in a light blush featured double-articulated patch pockets that you could warm your hands in from above or the side depending on your mien, and was cut in recycled silk.
Whether seen through close-up details like this or via the vast drone-shot vista of the finale, this was an Ermenegildo Zegna collection and show that made its sustainable provenance and construction a point of high aesthetic merit.
