Once all roads led to Rome. These days, at least in fashion, they end up in Los Angeles.
On Friday evening, the Italian menswear giant Zegna staged a brilliant expression of poised panache in a gala show at the Malibu Pier. Built in 1905, the pier has five years on Zegna, which was founded by Ermenegildo Zegna in 1910 in the hills of Piedmont, as a resource of superlative fabrics. Its latest materials were the backbone of this collection staged on a windy evening on the rough-hewn promenade, privatized for the event.
The leitmotif of the collection was creative director Alessandro Sartori’s concept of Villeggiatura, the mid-century Mediterranean concept of seasonal living and cultivated leisure. Then — as now — the act of relocating to a coastal or countryside villa for the summer to escape the oppressive heat of the city and enjoy a slower pace of life led to a different way of dressing, or fresh expressions of saper vivere and saper vestire (knowing how to live and dress, respectively), where the act of dressing gains spontaneity and a sense of easy rhythm.
A century ago, trains used to run the length of Malibu Pier to unload cattle hides and walnuts onto ferry boats for export from California. Similar tonal shades appeared in this collection, which riffed on beachside or nautical stripes with hues like aquamarine, algae, sea green, rabbit, dune, teak, and desaturated black — often combined in striped canvas totes and weekend bags.
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Throughout, the fabrics were superlative — suede crocodile shirt jackets or belted safaris in the softest lambskin. Few designers develop more novel materials than Sartori, who dreamed up remarkable new knitted-leather blousons, where the strands are suede on the exterior, and nubuck inside, giving the garment a slight glimmer in motion. Also featured: washed hemp gabardine or blends of raw silk, wool, and paper.
“Everything here starts from fabrics, which have texture and pattern, and look endlessly renewed by simply twisting and turning the subtlest elements, even just a thread. Constant evolution is what we strive for,” explained Sartori.
His jackets were roomy with broad shoulders and light padding, or narrow and deconstructed on safari looks. With seagulls and drones circling the show, Alessandro showed versions of his pathbreaking three-button blazer, this season in bouclé towelling; his seer-sucker Norfolk jackets with peak lapels worn with tailored shorts were another highlight. Detailing was precise. Pretty much every jacket and shirt had a back vent, or Spacco, to aid with movement and add a soupcon of grandeur.
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Back in 1996 when I attended my first Zegna show, the collection was almost entirely made up of crisp power-shoulder suits — always worn with ties — targeted at Wall Street and City bankers. But under Sartori’s direction, Zegna has pivoted to create cultivated, casual but always classy luxury. Better than any other designer, he has understood the post-Covid paradigm that successful men want to look at ease with their good fortune.
As Sartori puts it, it’s about “creating new categories, erasing staid ones in an endless quest for styles apt for liquid lives of today,” and developing an “evolving aesthetic that’s rooted in the classics yet freed from outmoded restraints.”
It’s a new cosmopolitan openness that somehow remains profoundly Italian. Over the past 20 years, Sartori has grown into one of the half dozen most influential designers in men’s fashion, as was clear from this display.
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The collection marked the second time Zegna has exited the June Milan menswear season to stage a mammoth show. Last year it transformed the Dubai Opera into a Zegna Oasis referencing Ermenegildo’s private garden, and staged an immersive multi-day immersive pop-up called Villa Zegna – offering bespoke tailoring and couture finishes.
Ale, as he’s known to most, feted the LA show at Chateau Marmont with a performance by acerbic ’70s pop-rock band Sparks, who were first formed in Pacific Palisades. The following morning, the hotel’s famed cottages became the site of Villa Zegna, part set evoking the family’s summer holidays and history, part private salon where for five days VICs can order bespoke or limited-edition looks.
Zegna now follows the example of giant French houses like Chanel, Dior and Hermès by taking its collection to iconic global locations. Dior staged its cruise show underneath the brand-new Los Angeles County Museum of Art in May, while Hermès held a sunset show in the canyons of Bel Air on Thursday night attended primarily by VICs.
Hermès designer Nadège Vanhee showed haute hip Hollywood chic – featuring ballet slipper silhouette gowns; femme fatale film-noir black suits; and bright satin gowns, riffing on California sunsets and graphic city signage. It was a fierce fall winter 2026 collection entitled The Second Chapter that was far from quiet luxury, staged before an audience carrying hundreds of Birkin and Kelly bags.
But back to Malibu Pier, where scores of movie producers and Silicon Valley unicorn founders joined double Oscar winner Mahershala Ali, Paul Dano, Stellan Skarsgard, Roman Coppola, Rami Malek and Korean supermodel and DJ Soo Joo Park on striped canvas fold out chairs. All of them in the easy fluid silhouettes and rich, natural fabrics Sartori has made his signature. Basketball legend Scottie Pippen, wearing a crisp linen jerkin with Zegna’s signature suede neck trim, and composer Ludwig Göransson, who won his third Academy Award in 2025 for the soundtrack of Sinners, were also present, amid a flurry of paparazzi snappers and phone-wielding Italian editors.
Zegna’s soundtrack blended 60s Italian ballads, the Divine Comedy and the roar of breaking ocean waves. Scores of surfers could be seen catching the evening swell to the north of the pier while burned-out seaside villas from last year’s Palisades Fires dotted the landscape to the south. Like the pier, which survived the category five Hurricane Marie of 2014, Zegna has weathered the ups and downs of the market better than nearly any Italian brand.
“You know what, we tend to do best in the years when conditions are tricky. Our quality, consistency and Ale’s creativity appeal even more,” mused Gildo Zegna, the chairman and the third generation to run the namesake brand.
Despite a very tricky 2025 for luxury, the Zegna brand scored a 4.5 percent rise in annual sales to €1.18bn last year, while the Ermenegildo Zegna Group — which includes Thom Browne and Tom Ford’s fashion division — notched a 20 percent rise in net profit to €110 million, earned on a slight dip of 1.5 precent in global sales of €1.917bn.
“An analyst recently called me the prince of patience and I like that,” chuckled Gildo, a twinkle in his eyes amid the last rays of sunset.
