Review of Zegna Spring 2024 Men’s Fashion Show
Lightness and Linen
By Mark Wittmer
As if we needed another reason to crave creative director Alessandro Sartori’s mastery of cut and material, the scorching Milan heat amplified by the concrete of the Piazza San Fedele (which was framed by 192 bales of raw linen) made the lighter-than-air linen looks of Zegna’s Spring 2024 collection even more irresistible.
Subtitled L’oasi di lino, (the oasis of linen), the collection forms a summertime sequel to last season’s oasis of cashmere, pushing the ideal summer fabric to its most luxurious and innovative possibilities across Sartori’s signature relaxed tailoring and refined sportswear references.
With linen at the forefront (but a bevy of other materials and fabric structures on show as well), the collection continues Zegna’s proposal of a new kind of complete wardrobe, one that takes the idea of the tailored suit as a daily uniform as its nucleus, but rejects the rigidity of the three-piece suit and opts for fluidity while leaving the layering up to the wearer. Softly precise jackets swap lapels for low or standing collars. Shirts eschew buttons. Fluid pants billow with the movements of their wearer. The sack jackets with 3/4 length sleeves return from last season in a boxy yet supple cut.
The linearity and softness of the silhouettes belie the pieces technical details, which are subtly constructed or worked deftly along seams, offering utilitarian practicality but keeping simplicity and texture at the fore.
While, thanks to weaving the linen fibers in the style of silks and satins, a kind of smoothness that gets back to the idea of the uniform pervades much of the collection, a sense of surface tension is in play as well. Knit raffia disrupts the surface of more familiar wool knitwear; washi paper and hammered leather create subtly organic textural effects.
A new footwear proposal is made via a rounded slip-on with a bulbous cork-like sole and finishes off the sense of organic, sculptural simplicity.
Like the cashmere in the previous collection, Zegna has also now announced a commitment to make all of its Oasi linen completely traceable by 2024 – another example of traceability as the new big thing at the intersection of luxury and sustainability.
Putting a deep understanding of material to work in serving a pristine vision of fluid, sensitive, and practical dressing, Alessandro Sartori finds in the lightness of linen a lightness of living.