Zegna

Zegna was founded in 1910 in Trivero, a small town in the Italian Alps, by Ermenegildo Zegna. The proposition was simple from the start: to make the finest wool fabrics in the world.

Over the following decades, the house began sourcing fibers directly from Australia, Mongolia, and South Africa, weaving them in a mill at the foot of the Alps. For its first half-century, the company was known as a textile manufacturer, a “wool mill” whose cloth was sold to tailors and other fashion houses across Europe.

Menswear became the brand’s main expression in the 1960s, when Ermenegildo’s sons, Aldo and Angelo, expanded the business from fabric production into finished suits. The design language is rooted in the soft Italian tailored jacket, with natural shoulders, full-canvas construction, and lightweight high-twist wools suited to year-round wear.

Alongside the suit, the brand developed a vocabulary of overshirts, blouson jackets in deerskin and suede, and trousers cut with a clean, slightly tapered line.

Within Italian menswear, Zegna shares the northern fabric tradition of the Biella region with Loro Piana. Its tailoring sits between the structured Roman cut of Brioni and the soft, near-unpadded Neapolitan shoulder of Kiton. The company’s Vellus Aureum trophy, awarded for the world’s finest bale of merino wool, has become a recognized marker in the textile trade.

The business grew into a vertically integrated group as it pushed further into ready-to-wear. Launched in 2004, the Z Zegna diffusion line offered a younger cut at a lower price than the main label.

In 2013, Stefano Pilati joined the house as head of design for the Ermenegildo Zegna Couture, bringing a sharper, slimmer silhouette to the made-to-measure offering after his years at Yves Saint Laurent.

Creative direction of the main line passed to Alessandro Sartori, who returned to the house in 2016. He reshaped the collection around a relaxed tailoring vocabulary, drawstring trousers, chore jackets, and knitwear in place of the traditional two-piece suit.

The group acquired Thom Browne in 2018 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021. Beginning with fall 2022, the company retired Z Zegna and consolidated all collections under a single Zegna name.

Today, the brand dresses a customer who wants Italian tailoring in a softer, looser cut. Its main ready-to-wear sits above mainstream designer labels and under the bespoke Roman tailors it once supplied, while its Couture and Su Misura lines match or exceed that bespoke pricing. Its lasting contribution remains the mill in Trivero, which still produces the cloth that defines how a soft Italian jacket feels on the body.