Congratulations! Ermenegildo Zegna has announced the engagement of Alessandro Sartori as its artistic director. The news, disclosed via press release this morning, formalizes a reunion: Before joining Berluti in 2011, Sartori spent eight years as designer of Z Zegna, the Italian brand’s second line. Before examining the implications of Sartori’s arrival on the world’s largest exclusively menswear luxury fashion business, here are the speeches. Gildo Zegna, scion and CEO of Ermenegildo Zegna, said in that statement: “I’ve known Alessandro and his style for many years and I am extremely excited to welcome him back to our group. His talent, creativity, passion, and modernity make him the perfect fit to help us take Zegna to the next phase of its development.”
Sartori added: “I want to thank Gildo and the whole Zegna family for this fantastic opportunity. I grew up watching and admiring their creations and their authentic and deep values, and I am extremely excited to write with the whole Zegna team the next chapter. I cannot wait to enter their fabulous archives and to meet their artisans to start working on the new collections.”
So what can we expect of Sartori at Ermenegildo Zegna? The first thing to note is his title: artistic director. That suggests a far broader remit of creative administration than designer—which might be very welcome. For the structure of Zegna is currently something of a hotchpotch minestrone. Zegna Sport was not long ago subsumed by Z Zegna and has yet to find its feet. The “Couture” collections of just-departed Stefano Pilati, while wonderful to watch in a no-holds-barred big-production show environment, were so conceptually emphatic as to flirt with disconnect from Zegna’s USP as sheep-to-suit, vertically integrated, master manufacturer of fabrics and sartorial suiting (along with luxurious diffusion pieces).
Is Sartori the man to muster these ingredients into a harmonious, highly desirable, commercially successful whole? Nothing is certain, but he seems a great bet. His five-year tenure at Berluti was notable. He was plucked from Z Zegna by Antoine Arnault to develop the 1895 vintage shoemaker to plutocrats and Andy Warhol alike into LVMH’s only dedicated full-selection masculine brand. Achievements include the purchase of Arnys—tailor to Yves Saint Laurent and Le Corbusier—and its integration into Berluti as a bespoke atelier. Then there was the redesign and expansion of Berluti’s retail operations into a network of just under 50 stores. Crucially, all this was achieved without any notable alienation of Berluti’s core customer base.
The night before presenting his debut Berluti collection in January 2012, Sartori personified his customer as “a man who is chic and refined with a very good style. A lot of education. But relaxed, not stiff. That’s what I like.” Through the application of technical industrial processes to traditional handmade fabrication techniques—and via a finely attuned eye—he built turnover of the company from €30 million to more than €100 million. Sartori’s surname doesn’t precisely translate as “tailor”—that’s sarto—but tailoring is in his blood. His grandfather and mother worked in the business, and Sartori was raised in a Biella apartment across the road from his mother’s atelier. He cut his first suit at 14 and studied fabric technology in high school. Plus, he’s an excellent designer and a charming fellow. Perfect fit? Let’s not jinx it—but this feels good.
The post Even Better Than Made-to-Measure: Why Ermenegildo Zegna and Alessandro Sartori Might Just Make the Perfect Fit appeared first on Vogue.