Alessandro Sartori Has All the Ingredients He Needs at Zegna
The artistic director of the Italian menswear brand, who received the WWD Menswear Designer of the Year award, said he has reset Zegna relying on the company’s strong pipeline and internal resources.
Alessandro Sartori considers himself “one of the luckiest designers in the world.”
At the WWD Apparel and Retail CEO Summit in conversation with WWD style director Alex Badia, the artistic director of Zegna attributed this not only to the opportunity he was given working with the Italian menswear company, but also because of the bountiful resources at his disposal.
Sartori compared his studio to a restaurant that has in its own backyard the vegetables, fruits and grocery needed for the best recipes. “I open the door and all the ingredients are there, produced internally, and this gives me the fantastic possibility to work starting from the raw materials, as we design the yarns, the fibers, the fabrics and, of course, the collections.”
The recipient of the WWD Menswear Designer of the Year award, Sartori was acknowledged for leading the major stylistic shift and commercial success of the Zegna brand.
The connection with Zegna runs deep. Sartori began his career at the Italian group in 1989 as a menswear designer and became creative director of the Z Zegna line in 2003. In 2011, he was appointed artistic director at
Berluti in Paris and left five years later to rejoin Zegna in his current role.
Asked about those days in the French capital, Sartori admitted the city can be “very intimidating,“but that he would “suggest, if possible, to any designer to spend” a few years there, where “fashion is different, more related to marketing, amazing management and fantastic retailing.”
At the time, Berluti “was a little jewel,” and, by launching the brand's ready-to-wear category, Sartori “enjoyed the experience very much. Working and living in Paris was very good for me and my career, but my soul was at Zegna.”
It appears this worked both ways because, unexpectedly, Sartori in Paris received a call from chairman and chief executive officer Gildo Zegna. What started as a coffee invitation in the Alps turned into a seven-hour meeting. Although his job at Berluti was critically acclaimed, Sartori decided to return to the Italian company.
His relationship with Zegna is “one–of-akind. When you grow around the factory, and my mom was a tailor, for all the people in the industry that was a myth company,” said Sartori, who hails from Biella, near Trivero, where Zegna is based. After receiving a degree in textile engineering in Biella, followed by a degree in fashion design at Istituto Marangoni in Milan, in joining the company he saw “a great family with passion, values and stamina, a company with strong energy and caring for people and the industry.”
These elements continue to be relevant for Sartori, who acknowledged “strong chemistry” with Gildo Zegna and his son Edoardo, chief marketing, digital and sustainability officer of the group, and the management at large. He enjoys the “energy of a start-up” at the company, despite its size.
That meeting with Zegna, discussing Sartori's return to the brand, was pivotal. “We spoke about what you see today, the rebranding, transforming menswear, changing the image,” the designer recalled. “We knew there was room for something different and for a new suit.”
The new course of the brand began in January 2021, as Sartori acknowledged that traditional formalwear had run its course. During the pandemic, Sartori decided to present the fall 2021 collection with a video, moving away from the classic show production to a movie one, with a specialized and dedicated crew. “We decided to tell a story that was easier to be seen in a video, with a focus on the proportions.”
The world had changed and Sartori realized that everyone needed comfort during the pandemic, but he was “not happy with all the tracksuits,” he said.
After all, he joked on stage, his own surname has a sartorial component.
To change Zegna's aesthetic to respond to the need for more comfort while staying stylish, he introduced a new luxury leisurewear, the new suit, “creating a new story but keeping the high quality and the craft,” he explained.
“I remember the first meetings with our tailors, presenting the sketches of overshirts, the boxy silhouettes. They were used to doing blazers until the day before and were freaking out. But as we applied the tailoring techniques, the handmade shoulders, the fantastic sleeves to these sportswear pieces, then everything clicked,” Sartori recalled.
The transformation passes through the materials, too, and now is the knitwear moment, he contended, on anything from jackets to pants.
“Once knitted, we send to Trivero and we finish [the garments] as if they were normal fabric, in the end the silhouette is naturally elastic, without any Lycra and honestly I think this is the future. It's a question of when, not if,” he remarked.
Sartori has further developed his personal take on menswear, culminating in a successful spring 2023 collection and a signature style, experimenting with light shapes and technical finishes, developing a new leisurewear silhouette and subverting under and outer layers, as his shirts became jackets and jackets became shirts.
Sartori said this “new style that is recognizable through its attitude and not a logo,” is being well-received and the Zegna community is growing globally, from Japan and China to the U.S. and Italy. “I try to make [customers] look their best, not my best. What we do is authentic.”
Likewise, he believes in working with a community that is “natural, organic and authentic, we don't pay people for advertising, because the day after they may go and wear another brand. I want to keep the track and strategy straight and focused. We created strong icons, which are the fundamental new silhouettes, [the sustainable] Oasi Cashmere, the color palette, and we try to share those with the people that enjoy them. We get a lot of requests, but we work together only with the ones that are willing to walk the path that we do.”
Staging the spring 2023 show at the Oasi Zegna was also an opportunity to “invite guests to see what we are doing and why we are doing it, connecting the values and the source of inspiration.”
Asked if he would consider staging a Zegna show in New York, Sartori said “it's an ongoing thought because I love the city but at the same time we are very linked to Milan.”
The initial public offering in New York of the Ermenegildo Zegna Group, which also includes the Thom Browne brand and the textile business, did not change his daily job, but he acknowledged it provided “the right traction and for sure more attention. We are now on a different radar, but the listing changed Gildo and Edo[ardo]'s work more than mine.”
While luxury leisurewear is a driving force, the brand's made-to-measure business is also strong. “Yes, it's on fire. The events, the celebrations are becoming more important, and classic tailoring is now more related to personal values and styles,” Sartori observed of these pieces, which take up to four weeks to be delivered.
Zegna is committed to further training sales associates, who are increasingly becoming stylists for customers.
The stores are being renovated according to the new logo, which dropped the founder Ermenegildo's first name, the rebranding and a warmer palette. “The old concept was gray, colder and with dark wood, it did not fit with the new Zegna palette, which is lighter,” Sartori said. “You design the stores as you design the collections, and there is not one single format, and sometimes it needs to be changed, if you want to be up to date. The store design keeps being renovated and that's exciting. The last solution is always better.”
Joking, he said he always wears black, “and when I am very out of my mind, green, but I love colors and for men there are a lot of possibilities of new colors.” To be sure, Sartori has introduced suits in new soft and dusty monochromatic palettes, from powder white and buttercup to dusty rose, honey, vicuña and mocha, which are instantly recognizable.
What's next for Sartori? “I enjoy experimenting, sharing with and learning from people,” he said. This includes continuous research of fabrics, also relying on Zegna's strong textile supply chain, which includes the likes of Bonotto and Tessitura Ubertino, to name a few.
He cited the 1976 science fiction movie “Logan's Run,” which he watched while schooling at Istituto Marangoni. “The plot was basic but it was interesting for me to see that they were all wearing jersey and knitwear. Traceable and natural fabrics are the media of tomorrow,” he concluded.