Zegna’s commitment to regenerate, reuse and transform the wool and technical fabrics developed by their textile division to create new fabrics is the same ideology Zegna applies to re-thinking modern tailoring. In a world where plastic is piling up and finding its way into our oceans, creative director Alessandro Sartori felt it was important to minimize waste. “We are pushing upcycling of materials as part of the production process. “We call it ‘use the existing.’ We started last winter with cashmere, now ten outfits in the show are done using this process,” Sartori explained.
A whopping 20 percent of Zegna’s Spring 2020 menswear collection was made from upcycled pre-existing Ermenegildo Zegna fabrics. For example, the “Achill” suit is made from rewoven wool scraps discarded during the process of spinning wool. While recycled nylon was used in fabrics made to look like denim, as was the recycled cotton interwoven with linen to create a paper-like effect. There was also many fresh new iterations of the suit, aka “generational suits” consisting of a bomber jacket paired with matching trousers that offers a more relaxed silhouette for young millennials.
“It is our duty as denizens of this world to live responsibly,” says Alessandro Sartori. “I want to do it using the creative means I have at my disposal, which extends from the fabric making, to the exquisite tailoring, to the highly communicative aspect of show-making. Everything is connected, and everything conveys the same idea: we do not need to create the new from scratch, but we can reuse and reinvent the existing, making new fabrics from discarded ones, and translating traditional techniques into innovative tailoring, like turning an abandoned place into an area of creation.” Zegna is not moving away from suits entirely they are just changing the template, for something younger and cooler.