Exploring the possibilities of both thoughtful tailoring and innovative fabric-making, Artistic Director Alessandro Sartori draws up the New Set as a scale of possibilities for the individual to adopt and adapt. Fluid volumes and streamlined shapes allow for a new dialogue between clothing, body and gestures. The sense of properness that is a corollary of formality is translated into a harmonious, yet unpredictable use of colours and textures, and a gently non-formal look.

“My aim at Zegna is to create an accord between the essence of tailoring, which is our reason for being, and the rhythm of the modern world. What I have done is a rewiring of luxury crafting, following a flow that frees the man while keeping the distinctiveness, offering pieces that are easy to wear as they are inventive. Effortlessness is the key”, says Alessandro Sartori.

The collection is marked by an utter sense of lightness. Liquid and comfortable silhouettes revolve around collarless kimono shapes, utilitarian chore coats, long dusters, oversized overshirts and a new generation of knitwear. Weightless, tightly woven fabrics and paper-thin leathers allow shapes to show off the clarity and precision of design without any padding or constructions; firmness of line encounters freedom of movement. The New Set is an act of translation that takes inspiration from the practicality and pragmatism of workwear to get a progressive spin on tailoring, with magnified details – oversized pocket flaps, augmented drawstrings – making a statement without forsaking function.

The movement is sealed by the intermingling of shapes and innovative fabrics where vegetal fibres, new blends, jersey and #UseTheExisting fabrics are core. Boxy blazers are cut in padded, washed silks or in featherlight nylons; long parkas come in overdyed wool, silk, hemp and linen twills. Glazed wool lends a liquid, metallic feel to summer coats. Extreme matting captures the light in pragmatic ensembles with a lived feel. Geometric patterns are either magnified and diluted or patchworked into faded compositions, including the unedited blend of ‘Bielmonte’ Italian wool. Thick cotton jumpers and lighter underpinning with a small frontal folding detail further highlight the practicality of the collection, which is carried in the padded paper leather slippers, in the totes and canvas work bags, in the foldable backpacks. Lightness is ultimately also a chromatic matter, conveyed by the watery color palette that amalgamates pale notes of calcite, workwear white, ammonite, under bark, mineral green, cypress with calm tones of dark concrete and matt black and lights up with sudden bursts of skylight, utility blue, amethyst, cobalt.

The collection is presented in the form of a film that plays off an energizing juxtaposition of freedom and restraint. The camera moves fluidly inside a green labyrinth to open up in glimpses of the concrete jungle, playing off narrow spaces with vast horizons, the human and the natural, embodying a new set in which opposite worlds merge to progress.