Z Zegna (Q7188)
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Z Zegna is a fashion house from BOF.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Z Zegna |
Z Zegna is a fashion house from BOF. |
Statements
As Ermenegildo Zegna leans from the house metier of tailoring toward a reset masculine wardrobe hybridized from workwear and sportswear, Z Zegna is meeting it from the opposite direction. This second line, which a while back was itself reset to encompass the phased-out Zegna Sport collection, has in recent seasons (especially those shown in the Pitti pavilion) leaned heavily on the “technical.” There were plenty of fine techy garms here, but there was also a fresh emphasis on tailoring unseen at this label for a while.A jacket featuring a novel scarf collar plus various others in Alessandro Sartori’s favored slimming but substantial 1.5 breasted shape were the surprise interlopers here. Against them were played some outerwear and knits whose vibe was distinctly un-technical: peacoats, high-collar overcoats, long ribbed cardigans (sometimes styled over jackets, which was mind-melting), and swoopy blanket shawls in an abstract botanical pattern. These were all delivered in a mellow, autumnal russet to charcoal palette.There were fine workwear-derived pieces too, including some completely dreamy wool overshirts and pared down, zip-up chore jackets. The final voice in the chorus was that technicalwear. Multi-pocketed jackets in the house’s water-proof treated merino—there was even a merino ripstop—had removable skirts and were styled against complementary combat pants and even combat beanies (featuring a zippered pocket) for those wishing to go full SWAT team.Down jackets came in unusual shapes thanks to wool and nylon padding that was pre-shaped and then quilted around. Again, this was a sustainably ambitious collection, in that 75% of all materials were recycled, and that those down jackets were feather-free. You can see that Sartori is working to cultivate a hierarchy-free clothing ecology in which the various lineages of masculine attire are all fair game to be sequenced, spliced, and rewritten into a fresh template for dress that is greater than the sum of its parts.
19 January 2021
Alessandro Sartori has a big vision for the house of Ermenegildo Zegna—and we will see its latest iteration at this Friday’s much pondered “phygital” show—but he is also a warp and weft geek, a relisher of nanodetails. This aspect of him was apparent in our Z Zegna appointment.For a change it was held on Google Hangouts. On the other side of the screen Sartori informed me that this collection was inspired by Oasi Zegna, the nature reserve founded near the company’s base in Trivero, Italy, nearly 30 years ago. On the showroom’s walls was installed a collage of images of it, from wide-angled woody panoramas to macro moss-scapes, all shot by and overlaid with filters by Mattias Klum. These research pieces provided the prints, and the color palette.We rattled through the diversity of the offer in Zegna’s TechMerino™, treated wool that allows you to chuck It suits or technical sneakers in your washing machine. We paused to ooh over a jacket in waterproof leather as thin as paper. Then Sartori’s cadence quickened as we got to the nitty-gritty. We considered a sporty field jacket, slightly checked, that Sartori said was a mixture of recycled linen and nylon.Then there was a section of entirely recycled pieces under the label #UseTheExisting. Sartori said: “Now we are working with reclaimed wool, nylon, and cotton, and out of it we have done a full wardrobe.” The unintended consequence of this environmentally minded mixture, he said, “is that the new fabrics we get out, the ones we recycled are different, very resilient…so what you touch is a totally new feeling. And this is very interesting, because what we see is the more we go with research and the more we collect different techniques, we notice that we have a lot of new possibilities of working. These are fabrics with new characteristics.”Category-wise, this offering was as broad as the Oasi ecosystem, from ski parkas to cycling shorts via tailoring to early Armani-esque blousons in technical fabric and a much fancied multi-pocketed action jacket especially lovely in bushfire orange. But it’s at that nanolevel where the pursuit of technology in the service of nature is starting to bear unexpectedly luxurious fruits for Sartori. In a future where the process of manufacturing will be as important to the customer as its end product, this can only bode well for ZZegna.
14 July 2020
Alessandro Sartori was in upbeat mode during ZZegna’s press preview for the Fall collection. He’s steering the label towards a more comprehensive embrace of sustainability, and the results are not only encouraging from a technical standpoint, they’re also rather appealing from a style perspective. The key to ZZegna’s approach is the blending of high style and state-of-the-art performance, rounded up by the longtime commitment to sustainability pledged by Ermenegildo Zegna in its #UseTheExisting practice – an extensive use of recycled and repurposed materials. The Italian label is at the forefront of research in this field, and this has given ZZegna the green light (no pun intended) to address the sustainability conundrum head-on. In the collection, almost every piece had a recycled or upcycled component—from the piumini jackets’ fillings made from a third-cycle-recycled wool-nylon fiber, down to the inner soles of ultra-light shoes.Sartori was adamant in highlighting how technology and style go hand in hand in the collection and are actually its defining character: “It’s a marriage between relaxed tailoring and activewear, with a very high high-performance factor,” he said. “We wanted to emphasize this concept both in every single outfit and in the styling of the silhouette.” He called this approach “hybridization,” examples of which abounded in the collection.Take for instance what at first glance looked like a classic tailored double-breasted suit, sensibly worn with a sporty padded jacket. But as they say, God is in the details. The suit, cut in a sophisticated easy style with shoulders as rounded and soft as a shirt, was made in a heavenly soft 100% #UseTheExisting fabric (50% recycled wool, 50% recycled nylon from plastic bottles). The sporty padded jacket was made by combining three different techno materials, all treated to achieve high-level hygroscopic performances. The ensemble made a good argument for chic technical/sartorial hybridization.Sartori said the concept of longevity, both of materials and of style, is at the center of ZZegna’s project. The collection was about sophisticated, polished practicality, translated into updated wardrobe staples, travel-friendly, crease-free and ready to be thrown unceremoniously into the washing machine.
What further elevated its feel-good factor was the inventive, artsy sense of color which made the many hybridizations vibrant and upbeat—a clever twist that can appeal to a young, environmental-conscious audience approaching formal dressing with an unconventional attitude. Wearing a high-performance tailored suit, why not? But only if it comes with a conscience.
11 January 2020
The newly opened Olivier Saillard–curated exhibition,A Short Novel on Men’s Fashion, here in Florence tracks the development of menswear in tandem with the history of Pitti L’Uomo’s 30-year history. Five of the looks in it are fittingly by Ermenegildo Zegna (including one of the founder’s own suits), and two were made under the stewardship of Alessandro Sartori. This label turned a fresh page of its own today by presenting a Z Zegna reimagined via a new team and a new logo, but, most importantly, of a new philosophy.Sartori said it was partially a philosophy of alignment, “to apply a tailoring approach—how the silhouette is made, the fabrics, the construction of the shoulder—to every aspect of Z Zegna, where there was before a split between sportswear and tailoring.” Arguably more significantly for those notau faitwith the brand’s semantics was a newly overt emphasis on sustainability. If any fashion giant can reinvent itself as a sustainable operation, it is Ermenegildo Zegna. Famously vertically operated, it administers its own chain of supply, manufacture, and delivery from its farms and mills via its factories to its retail chain. Sustainability, however, is no quick-change; as Sartori said: “It takes time because you have to look at absolutely every action and every process. But we are looking, and changing.”After hearing Sartori’s description of the alterations applied to Z Zegna, the fear was that this excellent source of geeky yet sleek, functional luxury sportswear would have been fully taken over by tailoring; in construction and fabric that was, as promised, the case. Thankfully, however, the garments to which the philosophy applied offered plenty for punters disinterested in wearing a suit. The theme of the collection centered around desertification. These were indeed dashing ensembles for whatever aridly apocalyptic futures-cape awaits unless global warming is reversed.Pants and jackets mixed crunchily treated flax and panels of recycled synthetics. One parka shifted with dune-like shimmers of color warp, thanks to a moiré process novelly applied to (recycled, water-bottle sourced) nylon. There was a clever collision of traditional tailoring checks with voguish-ly “technical” mesh materials. Of course there were tailored jackets, some in bouclé, some in the check-on-check, and others in ultra-light treated cottons. These featured insulating pocket-flap details and shirting-light shoulder construction.
Worn under a red recycled synthetic and ripstop panel parka, a bomber-jacket tracksuit in a finely red-checked blue weave of the company’s machine-washable Techno Merino fabric looked like a trusty companion for future service as both dress codes and global weather conditions change. This latest twist in the Zegna narrative suggests its determination to change with the prevailing winds of social awareness while retaining its commitment to kick-ass menswear.
11 June 2019
Instead of riffing off one sport, as it has for many seasons now, this time round Z Zegna underwent a pragmatic and productive reset. The collection was presented in a Pitti pavilion backdropped with an illustration of some future eco city—a little bit Wakanda, a little bit Bosco Verticale (Milan’s “vertical forest” buildings)—and the clothes around it were garments envisioned for its inhabitants.This was a really interesting coalescence of myriad hybrid ingredients, with the main dialectic swinging between sartorial tradition and technologically driven potential. One attractive lightly quilted shell jacket in camel came with a self-heating option. Press the button in your pocket and your jacket will give you a blast of insulation, increasing the temperature by up to 10 degrees. Another attractive shell jacket, this one black, featured a charging pocket in which you only had to slip your phone for it to start gaining juice wirelessly.Both of these features were invisible, but there was plenty of displayable technicity, too. One feature that ran through the collection were pants tapered by a double-tabbed velcro fastening, inspired by cycling clips. These looked very cool, especially with the little flashes of reflecting material on the back of each tab. Other trousers and shirts came inset with webbing into which you could attach portage: a military-sourced, functionally driven feature that happens to look badass. Sneakers featured a new sole designed in conjunction with Vibram; made of a honeycomb of nodules connecting the sole of the shoe and the bottom, these allow air to run through the structure and, apparently, reduce humidity in the shoe. Another sneaker feature was a magnetic clasp that functioned like laces and which also featured on some garments. This sounded a very satisfying metallicsnikkwhen engaged.Sartorially shaped topcoats in water-repellent gabardine, tapered pants in super-light drill, and worsted wool versions of Z Zegna’s machine-washable Techmerino leisure suits were more traditional-appearing, but just as progressive additions to a collection that really did look as utopian and desirable to inhabit as that illustrated future-city on the wall. I would happily live in Z Zegna—just saying!
8 January 2019
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.
12 June 2018
The bark chips on the floor of Z Zegna’s birch-filled Pitti pavilion sure tossed up a lot of dust—apparently, the Zegna staff has been vacuuming overtime—yet they played a key illustrative part in a collection dedicated to the vast area of mountainous nature reserve around the company’s north Italian base. That park, the Oasi Zegna, was formally founded in 1993 as the culmination of a series of environmental projects begun by Zegna’s founder, Ermenegildo Zegna, back in the 1930s. Thanks to him, the inhabitants of Trivero have long been blessed with plenty of Alpine landscape to freely wander (or ski) through.The tailored and the technical overlapped via looks that mixed formal shapes and sportswear in a collection colored in tones drawn from the Oasi and styled to be ready to explore it. Quilted jackets with inbuilt chest protectors were worn over French corduroy plus fours, hearty woolen socks, and delicately robust hiking boots. Tailored topcoats or tweed blousons were shown over more quilting, plus webbing harnesses slung with pockets—handy for the man who likes to sacrifice storage to keep the shape of his outerwear. Casentino-finish overcoats and tapered pants in Irish wolfhound gray, leaf-green brown, or snow white were sometimes lined with quilted inserts to deliver the insulation and comfort their handsome fluffiness signaled; that coat in Look 28, especially, appeared as a wearable oasis long worth lingering in. At the front of the presentation were some heavier, extra-fine flannel examples of the fully washable suit introduced by the company last summer, and to its back was a capsule of sportswear pieces and sneakers in the proprietary Techmerino material, inspired by an old in-company fitness club. In a collection so dedicated to healthy living and outdoorsmanship, the unstinting lustrousness of its fabrication sometimes smacked incongruously of decadence, but this was a virtuous, clean-living decadence.
10 January 2018
Who would think that one collection could coherently span city tailoring and competitive-sailing gear? Under Zegna’s Alessandro Sartori, whose design role overarches all its products, the merge works because both sides of the equation are based on authentic company traditions rather than mere shallow athleisure trendiness. The story is that the Zegna family, which made its fortune as producers of excellent Italian tailoring, also has a long relationship with the sea. Having been involved with regattas in Portofino for over 36 years, Z Zegna now sponsors the high-tech racing yacht Maserati Multi70, skippered by Giovanni Soldini, and has produced a capsule collection of the kit. This might only be a side thing going on in the collection, but it stands as a kind of reassurance that this is a company that isn’t just going with the uncool flow of pretend sportiness that has spread all over the industry.That’s a good thing. The Zegna sort of customer is not a man to be fooled, or fooled with, when it comes to the quality and realness of the product he wants to see. The sailing kit is just that, while the tailoring side has built-in technical innovation that doesn’t trouble the eye in any fancy way. On the surface: good wide-leg pants and jeans with a clean cut to the waist, paired with neat, unlined jackets. Deeper: technical benefits woven into the fabric that will delight practical men. There’s cotton woven at such high density that it becomes water repellent (the khaki three-piece of jacket, shirt, and chinos is an example). Showcased here, too, is the new trademarked Techmerino fabric, certified by the Woolmark Company, which means that tailored jackets and trousers can be thrown into the washing machine and come out looking just as good. For this level of usefulness, the price will be 1,300 euros for the suit. Compared to the price of womenswear, an absolute snip.
20 June 2017
Tomorrow night,Alessandro Sartoripresents his first Ermenegildo Zegna Couture show in Milan. For the eagle-eyed, however, thisZ ZegnaPitti presentation contained signs of what’s to come.Z Zegna, which has absorbed Zegna Sport, is the more action-packed cousin of the label’s highest articulation. In the past, and certainly under Sartori’s predecessor, Stefano Pilati, all the labels in the stable went their own sweet way. But Sartori has imposed a new structure designed to unite. The color language of this collection, with a very natural quality with no hint of the synthetic or chemical, should follow through to tomorrow’s big reveal.This, clearly, was a very ski-influenced collection, a reference to the anniversary of a ski lift on Zegna’s Piedmont home property, plus a 1970s house skiwear line worn by members of the Italian national squad. A full ski suit in white was made of tight-weave cotton with only the faintest spray of sealant; its inside lining was Zegna’s proprietary breathable techno merino wool. This offering emphasized the organic as much as possible yet embraced technology, too: One ski jacket, whose bisected stripe was sourced from a four-decades-old Zegna ski sweater, contained an inner jacket with an in-built wirelessly rechargeable heating system.The collection went off-piste into tailoring that retained the stripes on lusciously soft topcoats and jackets, and whose pants, some of them lined and fortified to be ski-suitable, featured a high and wide waistband, tapering carrot legs, and attractively angled popper pockets also sourced from sportswear. These were seriously lovable pants, especially when teamed with soft-hued, short four-button shearling jackets and an intensely delightful double-face cashmere parka. Whatever its part in the wider Zegna picture, this Z collection was in itself a ski-styled slice of excellently rugged luxury menswear.
12 January 2017
We travel in such a fast-paced world that fashion has to take note and try to move just as quickly. Being left behind is definitely not an option. For designers and brands, it’s all about swiftly adapting to customers’ needs, whipping up wardrobes flexible and versatile enough for the challenging times we’re living in. Clothes have got to supply a sense of comfort, yet practicality must not trump elegance. Going from a business meeting to a La Scala opening without missing a beat shouldn’t be a headache for any guy.Presented in the label’s Milanese headquarters, Z Zegna’s Spring collection displayed an impressive array of combining options. Merging tailoring with sportswear, and performance with a dressed-up attitude, it ticked all the high-quality requirements that are paramount for the house. Fabrics were as inventive as they were exclusive, like the light, stretchy tech merino wool that can be unceremoniously thrown into a washing machine from where it would emerge immaculate without the faintest trace of a crease. It was used for everything from bonded jackets to the inside lining of smart urban sneakers. Silhouettes were trim yet relaxed and travel-friendly, with a tailored athleisure flair; jackets were short and modern, worn with softly tapered trousers. The Zegna treatment gave the lineup an unmistakable stylish flair; even a utilitarian pair of cargo pants looked as smart as the most sophisticated suit would be.
11 July 2016