Celebrating the Italian fashion house’s responsibly sourced cashmere collection
Michelangelo Zegna, a watchmaker by trade, owned a handful of looms nestled within the hills and slanting peaks of the Piedmontese Alps. He eventually handed them over to the youngest of his 10 children, Ermenegildo, who aged 18 and with the help of his brothers Edoardo and Mario, established a wool mill in the modest mountain town of Trivero in 1910. Within two decades it employed hundreds, and Ermenegildo’s eye began wandering further than Lanificio Zegna. In a mode of social responsibility not unlike the early governance of Cadbury or Olivetti, a meeting hall was built for the remote Italian comune, as well as a library, maternity hospital, gymnasium, nursery school, swimming pool, cinema, bar and ballroom. Restlessly ambitious, Ermenegildo’s scope widened to the surrounding natural territory in the Biella Province – an area that had been ravaged by deforestation – and in the early 1930s he began an enormous environmental restoration project. Officially completed by the third generation of his family, today the publicly accessible nature park known as Oasi Zegna stretches across 1,420 hectares of woods and 170 hectares of pasture, Ermenegildo’s eponymous company having planted over half a million conifer trees to date, as well as thousands of firs, rhododendrons and hydrangeas.
The Italian fashion house’s recently launched collection – that promises its fibres will be fully traceable by 2024 – channels this slice of Eden and is named accordingly: Oasi Cashmere. The 70-piece line, responsibly sourced from producers in Mongolia, uses the fine fabric on garments one wouldn’t readily associate with it, cropped bomber jackets, down vests and supple anoraks sitting alongside blousons, cardigans and lax blazers sans lapel and collar. Finished in warm vicuna browns, muted tones of camel, ochre and grey mélange are complimented by deep purples, aurora yellows and Bacca wine reds; while 3D jacquards, touches of bouclè, and textiles with brushed and needle-punched finishes lend a depth of texture. “At ZEGNA I have the unprecedented opportunity to create fabrics from weaving through to finishing, challenging our manufacturers, pushing them to explore uncharted waters,” notes artistic director Alessandro Sartori, commenting on the collection. “This allows me to mould our silhouettes right from the matter…”. Crucially, each item has a QR code that shows its entire journey, from farm to store, made possible by the company’s vertically integrated model and therefore accountability throughout its supply chain. Ermenegildo often expressed the desire to know both the name of the man who wore his suits, and the sheep who supplied the wool. One could see Oasi Cashmere as a contemporary near-realisation of that wish, honouring its founder’s deeply held affection for and obligation to the natural world.
Photography James Robjant
Styling Georgia Thompson
Grooming Kanae Kikuchi
This article is taken from Port issue 32. To continue reading, buy the issue or subscribe here
