AArtistic director, ZEGNA, 57
Artistic director, Zegna, 57
The Italian designer has been the artistic director of the family-run Italian luxury giant Ermenegildo Zegna Group since 2016. As artistic director, Alessandro Sartori oversees all Zegna brands and creative functions at the world’s largest luxury menswear brand.
Here he shares his pearls of wisdom in his own words.
My mother was a tailor. My brother is eight years older than me, and fashion never excited him, but watching my mother work, it was so electric, so inspiring. I didn’t understand what it was that she was doing, but watching her take fabrics, designs, laces and threads, and turn them from 2D to 3D in just a few days blew my mind. It was magic.
As a little kid, watching my mother design, it was my first ever crush.
I had posters of Marcello Mastroianni, Bryan Ferry, David Bowie and David Byrne taped on my bedroom walls when I was growing up. The effect that their music and art had on me was so profound, especially after seeing how they dressed and presented themselves. They were so effortlessly masculine without being square and boring.
Fashion wasn’t great back then but these men embodied class and style in a way that no one else did.
Years later, I met Chiara Mastroianni, Marcello’s daughter and I couldn’t help but ask if she owned any of the garments her father owned. Unfortunately she didn’t, but she said, ‘When I was a little girl, watching my dad dress up in the morning, it was strange because he rolled up his sleeves, crinkled his jacket, wore a hat in a crazy way, unlike all other parents, but then I finally understood this is why everybody loved him, why everybody is watching him, because he was different, elegant, and cool.
Hearing that made the penny drop for me, it’s where my inspiration and admiration for these kinds of iconic men, came from. Also, because of my mother, I understood the impact we have from watching our parents work.
Alessandro Sartori, Artistic Director, Zegna
My first ever attempt at designing and styling was combining my shorts and shirts when I was a child. My mother would tell me ‘oh no, you you can’t dress like that for school!’ But when I would get dressed for school, I realised I was already a designer because I had to put an outfit together every day. I was rebuilding the software for myself every morning. This became the foundation of my career.
Zenga is grounded in family values. More than 100 years ago, Ermenegildo Zegna had a vision to create the greatest menswear brand on the planet, with a focus on two things: high-quality tailoring and giving back to people in the community. He built a factory in northern Italy, and surrounding it, a hospital, schools, apartments, a full village and roads to connect the village to the Alps all the way to the factory and down the other side of the mountain. In the 1930s, he planted half a million trees, and we are still doing this.
The vision today is still a total dedication to the craft of tailoring. But the younger people are designing on iPads, something I cannot do, but it fascinates me all the same. If I designed a jacket that broke after three years, I wouldn’t have done my job. The goal is for you to wear a jacket that after fifteen years might have a little hole, but remains completely wearable. That is my dream.
We don’t do a lot of collaborations, and we certainly don’t do them just to make money. Of course, we need them to sell because if you don’t, that means you don’t deliver. But they’re made with the purpose of connecting different communities.
One day, a generation will arise where if a garment isn’t tagged with a digital passport, they won’t buy it.
I need paper and a pen to draw. When I watch younger designers do it on a screen it is magnificent, and as long as the dedication, respect and passion remains the same, then Ibelieve the sartorial soul will continue to shine in every single thread.
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