An immense industrial building in despair is the site for the Ermenegildo Zegna XXX show. The runway unfolds below extremely high ceilings that once hosted Area Falck: a monument to steely modernity that over the years slowly turned into a metropolitan wasteland. The dismissed area, however, will soon be re-qualified by Milanosesto into a hub for health and science, along with green and residential areas, gaining a new continuity with the city and a new meaning, reverting from waste to opportunity. As such, it will be included again in the metropolitan fabric, including people within it. It is the same philosophy Zegna is applying to textile resources, with the commitment to continue to create new fabrics from existing ones, and the same drive Zegna applies to re-thinking tailoring for the modern world. #UseTheExisting is the byword.
“It is our duty as denizens of this world to live responsibly – says Zegna’s Artistic Director Alessandro Sartori – I want to do it using the creative means I have at my disposal, which extend from the materiality of fabric-making, to the exquisite technicality of tailoring to the highly communicative aspect of show-making. Everything is connected, and everything conveys the same idea: we do not need to create the new from scratch, but we can reuse and reinvent the existing, getting progressive fabrics out of discarded ones, translating traditional techniques into innovative lifetime tailoring, turning an abandoned place into an area of creation”.
