Ermenegildo Zegna is wasting not, wanting not.
Roughly 25 percent of its 2019 XXX Men’s Fall collection comprise cashmere, wool and nylon textiles recycled from the Italian fashion house’s own factory offcuts.
The repurposed fabrications, which are supported by Zegna’s textile division under the slogan #UseTheExisting, are designed to be repurposable, too. Replete with detachable collars, cuffs and straps, the 44 looks are part of a wider, modular wardrobe that offers a less fettered take on tailored men’s wear for the urban dandy.
To that end, there are military shirts in khaki gabardine, jodhpur trousers with utilitarian pockets and banded leg cuffs, hybridized bomber-blazer jackets and one-and-a-half-breasted jacquard suits—all awash in a wintry palette of beluga black, midnight blue, flint gray and dusky burgundy.
Subversion and diversity are purposeful themes in the collection, according to artistic director Alessandro Sartori.
“Borders keep being narrowed throughout the world,” he said in a statement. “I felt the urge to advocate the power of openness and multiplicity through my own means as a fashion designer, expressing awareness and responsibility at every step of the creative process, from textile-making to devising new categories of clothing to the staging of the fashion show in such a meaningful place.”
In doing so, “I keep perfecting my vision of the contemporary metropolitan wardrobe: an idea of tailoring for a cross-generation of global customers,” Sartori added.