Milan Fashion Week’s menswear season kicked off Friday afternoon with a grand show and ground-breaking collection from a powerhouse brand- Zegna. Presented inside Palazzo del Ghiaccio, a giant, all-white ice-skating rink in east Milan, redesigned like a giant gentleman’s dressing room, where the cast walked out of huge closet doors.

 
Creative director Alessandro Sartori played with the house’s codes of refined elegance, even as he subverted them- with tailoring innovations and novel materials. Like his brilliant new Horizontal Three jacket, a snug double-breasted blazer, with a hidden third button that can be used to expand the garment into a far looser silhouette.
 
In terms of fabrics, Alessandro dreamed up a new blend of cashmere and paper- seen in check cardigan jackets. Devoid of interior pockets and with an unexpected hand, they hung perfectly.

The show invitation was a playing card, revealing the collection’s title- Memorie. A riff on the deep history of the brand, which has just named brothers from its fourth generation– Edoardo and Angelo– as new co-CEOs, 115 years after the label was founded in Trivero, Italy. This also referenced Alessandro Sartori’s own memories of his father, who died when he was a young boy.

 
“One of my strongest emotions was my dad putting on a suit or jacket. When I later found photos of him, I rediscovered my father through his clothes,” explained a wistful Sartori. 
 
The show was also the latest example of smart storytelling by this designer, who presented an early 1930s suit made for founder Ermenegildo Zegna in an Australian wool fabric woven at his own mill. Encased in a museum glass box at the entrance to the show, with a sign that read: Abito 1– or ‘First Suit.’
 
Staged on a classically cloudy January in Lombardy when a chill humidity seeps down from the nearby Alps, the collection looked ideal for the conditions. Notably, a beautiful series of Donegal tweed style speckled beige and brown suits. Worn with fine wool shirts finished with leather buttons. 
 
No other major Italian tailoring brand has been as courageous as Zegna in pivoting an historically business suits-driven business into the new era of casual luxury. A key reason it could do so is the talent of its creative director Alessandro Sartori.

 
That said, he produced multiple modernist suits in wide yet subtle stripes, cut with large, notched lapels. And showed multiple great coats with forgivingly softer shoulders. Natty yet always noble and worn on a cast of multiple generations, parading around the carpeted floor.
 
Backed up by a soundtrack that blended Nick Cave’s Into My Arms with Max Richter’s In The Garden, this was as polished a fashion statement as one could imagine. As Sartori kept stretching the Zegna DNA without ever snapping it.
 
“I am the custodian of the Zegna family wardrobe,” smiled Alessandro post-show. Before- for his next trick- trying on a Horizontal Three to show how the technique worked to much applause.