New York Fashion Week

Z Zegna, Spring/Summer '09 (scroll down to read the review)
Z Zegna
Now that Zegna owns a cool and massive studio space in one of Manhattan’s hippest neighbourhoods, the West Village, it only makes sense that designer Alessandro Sartori would feel compelled, if not entirely liberated, to break away from Zegna’s sartorial tradition and experiment with edgier turf.

That’s not to say that the construction and tailoring of Z Zegna’s spring show was not outstanding; on the contrary it was sublime, but the clothes were as far removed from a navy pinstripe suit as New York City is from Zegna’s hometown of Biella. In fact, before the show Sartori proclaimed there would be no navy, grey, brown or black. Instead he swept up dusk colours into a remarkable collection of cool cropped jackets with contrast trim, paint speckled shirts and pleated pants, tapered and cropped.

“The message of the collection is poetic tailoring,” Sartori said backstage. The poetry was in the subtle hand of the pale coloured slates, khaki and muddy blues—and in the broken prints, reminiscent of modern paintings. The tailoring was in the sharp trench coats and terrific anoraks, done in cool cotton rather than nylon. And while chief executive officer Gildo Zegna may not walk the streets of Milan in the wispy silk shorts that graced the finale, he’d be a fool not to lounge around his villa in them.

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