"It is not a question of if, but of when" says Alessandro Sartori, artistic director of Zegna, to tell how the pandemic that has upset our habits has given way to a radical change in the male wardrobe which, inevitably, will no longer be like before, not even when we go back to shooting without a mask.
"Some things would have happened in 10 years, we got there now" reflects the designer, explaining that this historical moment "is a step that projects you into another dimension".
Now used to having meetings from home, "men will no longer want to be forced, which is already happening now".
The forced revolution of rhythms has arrived in the wardrobes, giving life to a total reset, the key word of the Zegna collection for next winter, which opened the short edition of Milanese fashion shows (online only) dedicated to men's fashion.
Sartori himself, in front of his wardrobe, realized, like many others, that what he was offering was no longer suited to today's needs: "I have a lot of classic shirts and I don't know what to do with them - he says - I realized not to have enough knitwear ".
From the awareness that, after the pandemic, "tailoring will not return", the need arose to "reinvent something more useful for tomorrow".
And he did it by focusing everything on fabric, a felted and elastic pure cashmere jersey which, proposed in different weights, gives life to short jackets, jogging-style trousers, jackets with 2 buttons, all fluid and soft, without interiors, shoulder pads , bulky seams.
A modular wardrobe that focuses on knitwear and also comes in small sizes, designed to be worn by her, as happens in the launch video of the collection, shot between the Assago skyscrapers and Bocconi University, between inside and outside, to represent the soul of the collection, which transports the sportsman into the formal.
And here are the cashmere work jackets knotted like bathrobes, the sweaters worn instead of shirts, the jersey slippers with the sole of sneakers, the leather pullovers to put on as coats, the blazers with shawl collars, the kimono, suits as comfortable as pajamas.
A look to the future, like that of Gildo Zegna: "we finished the year better than we thought, managing to defend the billion in turnover, which was my goal, and - says the group's CEO - we are ready for redemption, which will surely arrive in 2022. Our motto for 2021 is that it will not be worse than 2020. In the meantime we are facing an epochal change of 'business model' of which Alessandro is a forerunner. We will dress Silicon Valley style, with him as her and the inside as the outside, but in the meantime we leave with the serenity of having survived, also thanks to our being specialists in high-level textiles, which is a way of protecting made in Italy ".
Zegna is convinced that "thanks to the London crisis, Milan will become an increasingly important economic epicenter, as Italians we always see things in a negative way, but there are people who are worse off than us. We have the capacity and the resources - he concludes - to get out of it ".