The Fashion For The Trees

Though 2020 forced brands to examine their own systems and behaviour, Ermenegildo Zegna was already well positioned for top to-bottom structural change, with sustainability built into the very ethos of the Italian menswear house, writes Mitchell Oakley Smith.

- Mitchell Oakley Smith

When Ermenegildo Zegna founded his textile business in Trivero, the small Italian town outside of Milan, in 1910, his intention was not just to make the world’s finest fabrics (being high in the mountains, the mineral content of the water helps this process), but also to improve the lives of the people in the region. He did so through many social means that seem modern even for today (schools and childcare, for example) but also by planting what would come to be more than half a million trees. And although the Oasi Zegna, as the 100-square-kilometre park has since been named, is known globally now as an early example of Herculean (and nongovernment) reforestation and conservation effort transforming bald mountains into dense forest, its primary beneficiaries are locals, the park connected to nearby villages by a 26km road, the Panoramica Zegna.

More than a century on, mid-last year Ermenegildo Zegna staged its first ‘phygital’ presentation, for spring/summer 2021, at the Oasi, with a film—in lieu of an audience-filled show, given the pandemic—that took us on a journey from the natural landscapes to the inner workings of the Lanificio Zegna Wool Mill that it surrounds, before making a final stop on the rooftop of the latter. In a way, it’s a representation of the journey that the materials the brand uses—from nature to the mills and finally to a collection showcase—and how Zegna is so much connected to nature since the very beginning, some 110 years ago.