Jul, 2020 | Fashion, Fashion Week, Milan

Ermenegildo Zegna – Summer 2021

by Mijean Rochus

Ermenegildo Zegna celebrated its 110th anniversary with a Phygital runway show – fusing digital and live experience for Milano Digital Fashion Week.

The setting was no other than Ermenegildo Zegna’s HQ in Trivero, two hours northeast of Milan. The super fashion show, which was live streamed, started as a digital short movie and slowly became an energetic movement that crossed borders and space.

Outdoors as a wall of hedgerow evaporated and plants created a unique reality, the natural elements and the textile looms melted in dynamic harmony while the clothing perfectly defined new modalities and solutions.

The Ermenegildo Zegna Summer 2021 collection is an exploration of the unique link between nature and machine, whose connection is the man himself, as a sensitive and sensible being. The show took place in spaces that are deeply significant to the Zegna spirit. Models navigated their way through Oasi Zegna, a nature park founded by Ermenegildo Zegna in the 1930s, right by where the company’s wool mill is located.

Fluidity and perfection dominate the collection, both in the structures and in the choice of colors. The volumes are clear and abundant, in combinations of clay, yellow, pink, gray, blue, green and black; materials are light but firm – wool, hemp, raw fibers, linen, paper/silk, papery nappa, and #UseTheExisting wools.

Experimenting with dropped shoulders, lowered collars, layered structures and a poetic feeling of functionality expressed by oversized pieces and zippers that facilitate volume expansion, Alessandro Sartori extends the sartorial search for new hybrid classes.

The result was a collection full of loose and fluid tailoring, lightweight jackets, roomy pockets, uncomplicated turtlenecks, colored pants and carefree silhouettes. This new offering represents Sartori’s menswear vision for Ermenegildo Zegna Summer 2021: perfect tailoring with a lighter, romantic feel.

“A moment like this can easily lead to a glorification of flawless precision of the machine, but at Zegna, in respect of a humanist tradition that is profoundly Italian, we believe that the human being always sits at the center, in harmony with nature. It is sensitivity and creativity, human qualities par excellence, that get the best out of machines. Without man, everything would be soulless. This project reflects this union of sensibilities, which is also a balance of past and future, inside and outside, in a cohesive yet multifaceted opus” said Alessandro Sartori.