Zegna is a fashion brand known for doing things differently. Unswayed by trends, the family-run house is instead driven by the ethos of its founder Ermenegildo Zegna. It should be unsurprising then that when you open the pages of its new coffee table book, what lies inside is a little out of the ordinary. Those looking for catwalk shots of the firm’s legendary menswear will find very few… instead this is an idiosyncratic, art-filled love story to a place: Oasi Zegna.
‘We wanted to pay homage to the founder of the company and of all the beauty that surrounds it. But the question was: how can we really recount the House and its core values, the emotions we feel in our daily lives? For 110 years, this story has remained as it is, pure: how can we share it just as clearly?’ asked Edoardo Zegna, fourth generation of the family and Zegna’s chief marketing and sustainability officer. His answer: ‘We decided to break down this complex and intricate myth into single elements to be read separately, each sparking different emotions.’
The first tree of Oasi Zegna, a now verdant forest measuring 30 times the size of New York’s Central Park, was planted by Ermenegildo Zegna back in 1929 – just 19 short years after the company was founded in Trivero and fabric production began. The reforestation of the mountain, on which the family has planted more than 500,000 trees over the years (including, since 2010, one for every baby born into the Zegna firm), was a gift to the town and the workers of the woollen mill, but also an ahead-of-its-time statement on the fashion house’s green intentions.
The road to Ermenegildo Zegna’s green ambitions has been long, so it is perhaps extra fitting that the brand’s identity (a version of which features on the book’s cover) centres around a simplified representation of the 232 road that, at 100km long, connects the wool mill with the highest viewing point over Oasi Zegna.
In 2019 the company was the first to sign the fashion pact, an agreement between the fashion and fabrics sectors to safeguard the needs of the planet, and then a year later Zegna’s artistic director Alessandro Sartori launched #UseTheExisting, a project that finds innovative uses for the parts of fabric usually discarded during the textile manufacturing process.
This is upcycling of the most luxurious kind because, as Sartori stated at the time: ‘We can reuse and reinvent the existing, getting progressive fabrics out of discarded ones, translating traditional techniques into innovative processes. This is Zegna’s answer to responsibility, making the dream of zero waste possible.’
It is Zegna’s quality of fabrics that has won it its suavely dressed army of fans over the years, so the materials that go into making those fabrics are also integral to the brand‘s green ambitions. ‘Traceability’ is the key phrase for Zegna, with the plan being to ensure that 100% of the fibres in its own ‘Oasi Cashmere’ and ‘Oasi Lino’ traceable from source by the end of this year.
Launched during Milan design week, at a time when much of the discussions around interiors are to do with increasing sustainability (be it fewer product launches or a new model of design fair that promoted less waste), it felt like a bold time for a fashion brand to be shouting about its own green mission.
However, this is a brand with the heritage to do so with confidence – as the family was keen to shout ‘The second-best thing we do is clothing. The first is Oasi Zegna’. This coffee table book introduction, ‘Born in Oasi Zegna’ (notably all printed on FSC-certified paper), is the perfect window into the firm and the late Ermenegildo Zegna’s unique world and vision, one that is being driven forward by several generations. zegna.com
