Lately, Anna Zegna has been spending
more time in her 100 sq km garden. Well,
not exactly her garden, so much as that of
the Italian textile giant and menswear brand
Ermenegildo Zegna. The brand’s founder,
Anna’s grandfather, opened his mill back in
1910, when he was just 18 years old, and he
later began planting what would come to
be known as the Oasi Zegna. A public idyll
around Trivero, the Oasi is now home to
many a fruit, herb and leaf that another of
the garden’s fans, Zegna’s artistic director
Alessandro Sartori, has used to provide the
dyes for a cashmere collection launching
later this year. Remarkably, it’s not all beige.
‘Just a few years ago, all you could do
without using chemical dyes were the lighter
shades – and there was a lot of beige,’ says
Sartori. ‘You’d start out with, say, this
beautiful deep red and, by the time you’d
washed the garment, 90 per cent of that
colour was gone. But now there are ways of
fixing the colour – rich purples from iris,
camels from teas – by a process of repeated
dip-dyeing. We’ve even managed to fix black,
which is the real challenge. It all uses a lot
of water, but at least there are no chemicals.’
The result, says Anna, president of
Fondazione Zegna, is the kind of interesting
idea only likely to appeal to a more
connoisseur customer, not least because the
process is expensive: it adds around ten per
cent extra to the cost of a cashmere piece,
but would add around 50 per cent to the likes
of a woollen jacket, the kind of thing which
may come later. ‘It’s a fascinating story,
though, because it’s about a real relationship
to the land, to history,’ she says.
History is a big thing for Ermenegildo
Zegna. As was typical of early Italian
industrialists, the family home was built
cheek-by-jowl with the manufacturing plant,
so young Anna and her siblings played in the
garden to the sound of the factory whistle.
But this year also marks the 50th anniversary
of its move into ready-to-wear, after almost
six decades supplying suit fabrics to tailors.
Ermenegildo had long encouraged a spirit
of progressiveness in the family firm – when
most textiles manufacturers wholesaled their
cloths and remained largely anonymous to
the end customer, he insisted on the company
name being woven into the selvedge. His
money was also behind Italy’s first men’s style
magazine and he established international
competitions to ensure access to the finest
wools. But his sons, Angelo and Aldo, didn’t
want to risk throwing that good name »
Intelligence
ANNA ZEGNA, PRESIDENT
OF FONDAZIONE ZEGNA,
PHOTOGRAPHED IN OASI
ZEGNA, TRIVERO, IN JULY