Ermenegildo Zegna XXX Summer 2022 Endorses A Fluid Connection Between Tailoring & The Contemporary World

Like many of its contemporaries, Zegna is focusing on the concept of reentering society. With many houses looking to counteract the move towards casual dressing with wildly escapist fantasies, it can be difficult to find a place for the classic Milanese tailoring Zegna is known for. However, artistic director Alessandro Sartori seems to have found a solution, in the form of the New Set, described by the Italian luxury fashion house as “an evolutional, fluid code to enter the world again by keeping the connotations of tailoring in both methodology and construction while devising new forms in new fabrications, tuned to the needs of today.”

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So what exactly does the aforementioned fluid code look like? Rather than resigning tailoring to something of the previous era, Ermenegildo Zegna XXX Summer 2022 uses fluid, malleable forms, innovative fabrics, and streamlined shapes to allow for a new dialogue between clothing and its wearer, resulting in tailoring that is distinctly of the non-formal nature.

“My aim at Zegna is to create an accord between the essence of tailoring, which is our reason for being, and the rhythm of the modern world,” says Zegna artistic director Alessandro Sartori. “What I have done is a rewiring of luxury crafting, following a flow that frees the man while keeping the distinctiveness, offering pieces that are easy to wear as they are inventive. Effortlessness is the key.”

In this case, ‘effortlessness’ translates to lightness, with mellifluous silhouettes and comfortable pieces like collarless kimonos, Zegna’s omnipresent utilitarian chore coats, long duster coats, oversized overshirts, and a new take on knitwear crafted from weightless, tightly-woven fabrics and paper-thin leather. Pieces forgo the addition of padding and construction, displaying clean lines that simultaneously allow for freedom of movement. 

Materials like vegetal fibres, jersey, and Zegna’s #UseTheExisting fabrics take centre stage in Ermenegildo Zegna XXX Summer 2022 Boxy blazers take on a casual approach, cut from featherweight nylon or padded, washed silks; long parkas are crafted from dyed linen, wood, silk, and hemp twills; and matting provides functional ensembles with a worn-in feel. The colour palette seems to draw inspiration from the tones of nature and geology, utilising calcite, workwear white, ammonite, under bark, mineral green, cypress, dark concrete, and matte black, which are occasionally brightened by pops of amethyst, lilac, and shades of blue in skylight, utility, and cobalt. 


Words by AR Staff