(Digital Fashion Week - Milan) Zegna showcases sartorial savior fare and core values of more than a century

The coronavirus-provoked fashion runway rethink was in full swing on the last day of Milan’s first Digital Fashion Week.

Ermengildo Zegna’s  Phygital presentation was a hybrid of physical and digital experiences that could be the harbinger for runway shows to come for the leading global men's wear brand celebrating 110 years.

The new collection integrates sartorial savior faire into Zegna’s core values that have lasted more than a hundred years, discovering the beauty of harmony among MAN, NATURE and MACHINE with a series of lively and elegant designs. This was not just a feast for the eyes, but also a journey Zegna embarked on to push its limits.

The luxury men's wear fashion house prepared seven minutes of footage of models traversing a natural runway in a 100-square-kilometer  nature park in northern Italy established in the 1930s by the label’s founder, Ermenegildo Zegna. From there, they segued into company’s historic wool mill, past machinery and archives.

The juxtaposition was meant to celebrate Zegna’s natural textiles as well as the fashion house’s 110th anniversary. A larger celebration planned for June had to be scrapped due to the coronavirus, which shut down Italy just after February womenswear previews.

Instead, ’’we celebrated in silence, among ourselves,” said CEO Gildo Zegna, the third generation to run the luxury fashion house that at one time had an astounding 30% share of the luxury menswear market.

The prepared footage of some 30 spring/summer 2021 looks for Zegna’s XXX tailored sportswear line was augmented Friday with three minutes of a live streamed runway show from the roof of Zegna’s wool mill.

’’This can be the show of the future,” Sartori said at a live presentation for fashion journalists. He imagines a part that is video, offering a glimpse into Zegna’s artisanal processes, followed by a live runway show, with a future guest list restricted to a couple of hundred instead of the usual 800.

Ermenegildo Zegna is a leading global luxury men's wear brand founded in 1910 in Trivero, Italy, by the young entrepreneur Ermenegildo, whose pioneering vision continues to inspire the company business development in a sustainable way: to use resources for the good of others; to give back to people and to employees; to take care of the territory and communities from which the brand comes.

The company is today managed by Ermenegildo Zegna as CEO, grandson of the founder and third generation of the Zegna family.

Throughout the years the company has evolved from high quality textile production to the artisan commercialization of sartorial expertise and onto the affirmation of a luxury worldwide lifestyle brand with a retail network covering over 100 countries.