This Zegna show took place en plein air, below the level stone glare of Alessandro Manzoni. His 1827 novel I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) is counted as the key literary catalyst for the fusion of a national Italian language—even if it was written when the Italian peninsula remained a mosaic of different states with their own distinct dialects. Under Manzoni’s sun-blasted statue hundreds of us gratefully wore identical Zegna baseball caps—we looked like we were on some corporate retreat—and sat surrounded by huge bales of linen.
Ever since his work at Berluti and now at Zegna, Alessandro Sartori has been manfully working to create an argot that coalesces into a new global language of tailoring—even as the sartorial codes of the last century become fractured and eroded by changing tastes and habits. As he said pre-show: “I feel the wardrobe of the future is not made anymore from the classic references. So it’s not about jackets, outerwear, knitwear; instead it’s about tops, underpinnings, bottoms, and shoes… the question is not what the suit of the future will be, but how the suit of the future will be.”
Sartori has already established his language and grammar, subject to constant tweaking, and this season he strove to introduce a fresher, lighter tense. This was articulated through linen, or the new proprietary house form of it named Oasi Linen. (Not so long ago some genius had the idea to rightly present Zegna’s 100 sq km nature reserve, its Oasi, as a product of its endeavours, an idea just as fit for 21st Century purpose as Sartori’s.) We were surrounded by 192 bales of deep golden unprocessed linen that had been trucked from the house’s partner producers in Normandy (where the climate is ideal for the production of linen, calvados, and cheese), and which would after the show travel onwards to Zegna’s spinning facility. Then it would be moved on, to be woven, or to be turned into jersey, or to be turned into knitwear.
The designer said that around 70% of the collection was made of this Norman-originating Oasi Linen, and there were many extraordinary technical feats achieved with the material. It was worked into the lining of construction free leather jackets with camp collars, and conjured into an almost wool-like density in the boxy “guru collared” jacket with cinching pleats under each vertical pocket (this piece was this collection’s defining one, and also came as knitwear). It gained a slubby, tactile feel in apricot straight-cut pants teamed with an apricot rib-knit cardigan. In deep v-neck shirts, shorts, and jackets it was fashioned into a jacquard featuring irregular seams of color. Much of the collection complemented the stony surrounds of the Piazza San Fedele before blossoming beyond the neutral into pale pink, green, and blue. And there was camel, of course.
To applause, Sartori took his bow surrounded by his models, his materials, his audience, and his collection. Manzoni, who once wrote “the heart has always something to tell about the future to those who listen to it,” kept his stony silence.
