Simple pleasures

“Last week I was dressing a doctor friend for a special night,” says Alessandro Sartori, Zegna’s artistic director, sitting on a sofa in the Italian fashion house’s Milan showroom. “He needed something a little different so we went with a deep-blue tux and an extra-large lapel.” As Sartori speaks, his eyes widen with excitement. “I really enjoy dressing people – getting the perfect fit, choosing the most amazing fabrics. If I wasn’t doing what I do, I would have certainly been a tailor.”

Before taking on his current role in 2016, the Biella-born designer held prominent positions at Z Zegna, the label’s now-defunct sub-brand, and Berluti. Yet Sartori, who grew up seeing his mother work as a tailor and his father design textile machinery, never forgot the joy of dressing individual customers. As far as he’s concerned, being a fashion designer is a service job. “As with hairdressers and make-up artists, designers’ work touches the human body so we need to be respectful and ensure that people feel like themselves,” he says. “We are not dressing them for our own pleasure.”

His grounded approach has helped him to steer Zegna through one of the most successful rebrands in luxury menswear – and entice customers to keep shopping, even as sales have slowed down across the sector. In 2024 it was the only house in the Ermenegildo Zegna Group (which also owns brands such as  Thom Browne and Tom Ford Fashion) that grew, generating €810.6m in sales in the first three quarters.

Sartori works closely with ceo Ermene­gildo Zegna, who was named after his grandfather, the company’s founder. On their watch, the brand’s name was shortened from Ermenegildo Zegna to Zegna; they also unveiled a new logo and a fresh design direction. “We wanted to recreate the Zegna silhouette,” says Sartori. “In the past the brand was recognised for quality and beautiful tailoring but we would design our collections based on seasonal [themes] and trends. Now we want to own a specific tailored look, to define the style of tomorrow. That’s why we started launching new designs that are easy to wear, uncomplicated and work across the seasons. It’s more utilitarian but executed with made-to-measure precision and luxurious fabrics.”

By way of illustration, Sartori points to some of Zegna’s new designs, from cashmere overshirts to loosely tailored blazers and the Il Conte chore jackets, with their raised collars and leather-trimmed pockets. “There’s classic tailoring, which many heritage brands execute at incredibly high standards, and then there’s experimental tailoring – eccentric lapels, pieces with too many buttons and so forth – which is usually for the pleasure of the designer,” he says. “But there’s a beautiful middle ground where you can express a fashion-forward point of view while also remembering that the garments that you’re designing need to be worn by real people. I’m always returning to the idea of respecting the customer.”

A sense of lightness and fluidity has come to define Sartori’s designs: think lapel-free cashmere blazers that are so comfortable that you’ll want to wear them all day but are smart enough for dinner; feather-light loafers that are appropriately named Secondskin; or cashmere polo shirts that make for the perfect layering pieces. A new outdoors-wear collection also caters to customers’ off-duty needs, with a wide range of ski and technical wear.

“Zegna performs so well for us,” says Sophie Jordan, the menswear buying director of e-commerce platform Mytheresa, which recently celebrated the launch of the new outdoors-wear collection with an event in Milan and Piedmont, home to the company’s factory and natural park, the Oasi Zegna. “There’s value and quality in every piece that it produces. With Sartori’s attention to detail and creative direction, the brand will continue to evolve and lead the menswear space.”

It helps that Sartori is his own customer. “I love wearing the same jacket from morning to evening so I’ve been focusing on the idea of multifunctional pieces,” he says. Men across the globe relate to his need for elegant yet pragmatic designs, including famous faces such as Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen (who is now a brand ambassador), film-maker Adjani Salmon and dancer Paolo Busti. “I want to represent our entire community, which ranges from men aged 20 to octogenarians.”

The idea of “an encounter of generations” was also on Sartori’s mind when he was designing Zegna’s latest collection, which the brand presented during Milan Fashion Week Menswear in January. Models walked around a vast runway that was covered in green grass, wearing tweed coats, high-waisted trousers and cardigans crafted with Vellus Aureum – an award-winning wool that set a world record in 2023 with a fineness of 9.4 microns. Sartori tells monocle that all of these items were designed to be collected, kept for decades and combined with staples from previous seasons. He compares his work to furniture and, like a true Milanese, makes frequent trips to the city’s Nilufar design gallery for inspiration.

The artistic director is equally fond of thinking of himself as a chef. “I work in the best kitchen, using the best ingredients,” he says with a big smile, referring to Zegna’s wool mill in Piedmont, which the founder established in 1910. It remains the backbone of the business today. The highest-quality merino wool is transported there from Zegna-owned or partner farms in Australia and washed using the region’s purified water. It is then combed to ensure that the fibres are parallel to each other and woven on machines, before undergoing rigorous quality checks. Specially trained artisans inspect every centimetre of the fabric by hand and mark even the smallest of defects, moving swiftly from one end of their station to the other as if they were choreographed.

“We love the idea of having every component of a garment made in-house,” says Sartori, who frequently drives to Piedmont to work with the factory team and gather new ideas. “The concept of ‘sheep to shop’ is real for us.” Above the factory is the founder’s office and vast archives filled with fabric swatch books dating as far back as the 1930s, when the first Ermenegildo Zegna travelled to the US to sell the woollen and worsted fabrics that he was already known for. 

At the nearby Villa Zegna, members of the family sometimes still gather for celebratory meals – usually a risotto, followed by a roast and baked cakes from the recipe book of the founder’s wife, Nina. Meals are then followed by rides up to the mountain to ski or enjoy the panoramic views from the Monte Marca Hut, which was designed by architect Ernesto Giuliano Armani. It was the founder who planted the first tree on the then-barren mountain in 1929, hoping to transform the region for generations to come. He also built roads, a hospital, a pool and a recreation centre for residents in the area in the belief that you can only produce high-quality clothing if its makers have fulfilling lives. It’s an inspiring entrepreneurial story that remains relevant a century later as luxury brands try to clean up their supply chains and build communities. It also offers Sartori and the new generation of Zegnas who are now in charge solid foundations from which to execute their new strategy.

“If the ingredients are good, the food will be delicious, even if the recipe is simple,” says Sartori, returning to his culinary theme. Zegna’s recipe for success is refreshingly straightforward: focusing on wardrobe staples and eschewing trends, putting the customer first and investing in intimate retail experiences. The company’s trusted retail partners include Munich-based Mytheresa, which shares its premium, customer-centric approach, flying top clients to Italy to experience family-style lunches at Villa Zegna and tour the company’s wool mills.

Emphasising the human side of the business, even as it scales globally, has proven just as important. Customer events, such as those held with Mytheresa, frequently result in friendships being formed, personal stories being exchanged and plenty of cannoli being passed around. Campaign shoots also often end with Sartori and Mikkelsen playing cards and singing karaoke into the wee small hours. “We are not here to teach anyone,” says Sartori. “We just want to be true to ourselves.” As luxury goes mainstream, being yourself and celebrating your humanity might be the most revolutionary approach that a designer can take. For Sartori and Zegna, it’s paying off. — L