Alessandro Sartori in his element<

"From here I can see my house." At the foot of the San Bernardo sanctuary at some 1,400 meters above sea level, the sign written in dialect (“Da qui I vigúmma la nössa ca”) could be signed by Alessandro Sartori. The artistic director of Ermenegildo Zegna was born in 1966 at the clinic in Trivero, the construction of which was financed - just like the social center, the swimming pool or the cinema in this town in Piedmont - by Ermenegildo Zegna himself , In the 1920's.

Deeply humanist, the weaver then also sets out to replant the surrounding nature to the extent of his wealth exploited in the valley. The forests having been amply cut down after the First World War to supply the workshops and the homes of the surroundings with firewood. He began by planting 500,000 conifers and rhododendrons on the hillsides beyond his factory, which opened in 1910.

And then there is this pure water from the torrents which explains the presence of many other workshops specializing in stripping, spinning and weaving draperies. It descends from where no one knew where because only a steep path leads to the heights. It also subsidizes a 26-kilometre road that connects fabulous viewpoints over the many bends... Towards the North, the mountains and valleys of the mysterious Val Sessera loom, still untouched by road access in 2018, then Mount Rose and its Dufour point which culminates at 4,634 meters. On the south side, the Po plain stretches from Milan to Turin and well beyond. It is in this marvelous setting that the entrepreneur also imagined several playgrounds for his employees and their families, as well as the ski resort of Bielmonte which hosted the first ski lifts in Italy from 1957.

A forest mood board

Today, this Panoramica Zegna serves more than 100 square kilometers of unspoiled nature which has constituted the Oasi Zegna since 1993. "A place of extreme purity and absolute calm one hour from Milan, sums up Alessandro Sartori who comes recharge there when his schedule allows him. As a child, I used to walk or cycle with my father. This is where he also taught me to ski. Of course, I'm always a little nostalgic when I come here because I can't help thinking of him (suddenly deceased when he was 14, editor's note), but this setting is also so enchanting, always green and different from season to season. In May, blooming rhododendrons line a 4 kilometer section of the road. From the end of September, it is a festival of autumn colors. And in winter, the relief of the mountain offers a completely different panorama. Often, the snow caps these pre-Alps up to halfway up.”

Alessandro Sartori knows the place by heart and doesn't need a map to imagine the multiple routes of his annual mountain bike weekend with friends. But it was an in situ report by Mattias Klum for National Geographic that put him on the trail of the Ermenegildo Zegna Couture collection currently in store. "His images caught my eye on facets of this nature that I no longer saw so much as they were anchored in my memory", continues the stylist who immersed himself in this setting, a few weeks after the publication, with several members of his creative studio based in Milan, in order to carry out research and find inspiration

"We took a multitude of photos, collected all kinds of flowers and plants to put together a mood board that I then shared with the textile designer from Lanificio Zegna." About ten years earlier, as stylist of the Z Zegna line at the time, he had already dreamed of a collection in colors based on ingredients gleaned from this forest. “The result was inconclusive. At best, we got shaded pastels, he recalls. Since then, textile research has made great progress. Thanks to the enzymes, we manage to fix natural pigments without heat and, in particular, on the cashmere fiber.”

And now a craft session with one of my absolute FAVE people @Twin_Made #BrightonSEO https://t.co/V0mWQ2BKLv

— Nat Thu Mar 25 15:02:52 +0000 2021

In a few selected boutiques, including the Ermenegildo Zegna flagship store in Paris, a capsule - branded Oasi Cashmere - of jackets, sweaters and knit accessories dyed with crocus petals, leaves or bark, has just arrived on the carriers. As for the main collection, distributed in the approximately five hundred stores of the family brand around the world, it is inspired by the thirty shades obtained from natural ingredients harvested in the Piedmontese undergrowth, as well as leaves of tea and coffee beans long known for their tinctorial power. “These first developments in vegetable dyeing open the door to a new generation of fabrics, rejoices Alessandro Sartori. For the time being, they are relatively expensive and produced in small quantities because they involve technical, industrial and economic constraints… Fixed costs will be divided if demand increases. Which I do not doubt because there is a real expectation in eco-responsible fabrics. Especially from young consumers who are curious, whatever the field, about the origin, the manufacturing conditions and the impact on the planet of the items they buy.

Artistic director of the entire Ermenegildo Zegna group since July 2016, the affable DA stands out from his contemporaries with his global vision of this textile industry. During this open-air interview, he talks about business as well as trends, spinning techniques as well as new media. He is a real child of the ball who has spent almost his entire career with the firm in his native village which has risen to the top rank in the world of men's fashion.

tissue culture

In 1968, Alessandro Sartori was two years old when the two sons of the founder, Aldo and Angelo Zegna, decided to launch a collection of suits in order to diversify the weaving activity which was beginning to suffer from the success of ready-to-wear. More and more businessmen then opted to buy ready-made suits rather than calling on the services of traditional tailors who, for the most part, got their fine suits from Zegna. He remembers spending his childhood in his mother's women's seamstress workshop on the same floor as the family apartment. His father was then an industrial designer specializing in weaving looms. After his disappearance, the teenager joined the textile section of the Biella high school rather than pursuing classical studies, then the Istituto Marangoni in Milan which trained in creative professions.

In 1989, his first job took him back to his roots… in the Zegna workshops. From 1991 to 1993, he moved to Hong Kong as a sportswear designer to rub shoulders with other experiences and see the country. The company that hires him when he returns? Always Zegna where he joined the studio then based in Novara. At least once a week, he goes to the Trivero factory to develop new fabrics in tandem with technicians. “Unlike womenswear, fabric development is an integral part of the creative process in menswear,” he explains. And more particularly at Zegna, which remains the only house in the sector with a complete production tool, from fiber spinning to the production of the finished product.

In 2003, he was entrusted with the project of a more contemporary line branded Z Zegna. Via this, the family label ventured onto the New York catwalks from 2007. The applause grew, and Alessandro Sartori was poached, in 2011, by the shoemaker Berluti to set up a ready-to-wear line. . The Parisian adventure lasted almost five years. In the spring of 2016, the Italian was called back by the Zegna family, which gave him full creative powers over all of the eponymous lines. The day after his final fashion show for the shoemaker in Paris, he is already at the design studio in Milan. Without delay, he seeks to renew ties with former colleagues of Trivero. Everyone he asks for an appointment is unavailable except for the following Saturday. "I did not seize by their merry-go-round," he says today. When he arrives at the factory on the Saturday in question, more than two hundred employees are waiting for him to celebrate a kind of return of the child prodigy. "A moment full of emotions, inevitably unforgettable."

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