Zegna models, in their burlap silks and circus-tent stripes, gathered at the end of the Malibu Pier on Friday night. The waning sun was at their backs, cutting through the early evening haze. Two stories below was the ocean, its lush blue reflected in some of their jackets and sweaters. It was quite the Instagram-worthy vignette. If there was anyone who didn’t have a camera phone held out to capture the moment … well, I missed it.
If you want to understand why so many European fashion labels have been hosting shows in California in recent weeks, this backdrop is a good place to start. Milan, where Zegna is headquartered, has its splendors, but a setting like this? You can get that only in misty (or is that smoggy?) Southern California.
Another reason is financial.
“America is doing exceptionally well,” said Gildo Zegna, sitting under a tree in the courtyard of the Chateau Marmont. He was dressed in a bespoke jacket and tie-front moccasins that would make their debut on the runway hours later. “I love to test the product,” he said.
Since 2023, the company has recorded double-digit growth each year in the United States. It opened a store in Scottsdale, Ariz., the weekend before. A location in San Diego is next.
Zegna, who became executive chairman of Zegna Group at the start of this year, leaving his two sons as co-chief executives, continues to hold up a magnifying glass to his family company. He spent the days before his show visiting stores in Costa Mesa and Beverly Hills.
“I act like a customer,” he said.
For the show, the company commandeered the warren of cottages at the foot of the Chateau Marmont, constructing what it calls the Villa Zegna. Picture a hybrid of Universal Studios, Italian edition. On their way in, shoppers encountered a butler, a playacting gardener and a candy-striped news kiosk. At a spare-little-expense pop-up shop, clients could order clothes straight from the show. They’ll receive them in three to six months, but one imagines that if you’re sufficiently affluent to order made-to-measure runway looks, you won’t go naked until then.
That collection spritzed notes of 1970s beach club across the designer Alessandro Sartori’s well-established language of boxy jackets and open-neck knitwear. There were button-free seersucker shirts, like the offspring of a dress shirt and a tunic, and sun-faded stripes channeling beach umbrellas.
A terry-like jacket with confetti-colored threads down the front looked like what an American businessman might have packed for a Capri vacanza once upon a time. Triple-pleat leather boxing shorts were admirable in their absurdity.
I was drawn to a jacket with a cavernous center pleat across the back. It fluttered like a flag in the wind as the model walked past. I was less taken by the short-sleeve blazers, like T-shirts that got scolded to grow up already. Those are an inane concept that should be left for dead.
A year ago, Zegna staged a similar destination show in Dubai, tipping its hand to where its global ambitions lay then. The war in Iran scrambled all that. Gildo Zegna said that the company had recently rebounded in the Middle East but admitted that there have been a couple of uneasy months.
“We are in a delicate moment for luxury,” he said.
Malibu, in this context at least, was a safer setting. And indeed, the evening had the chummy air of a beachside wedding. Men dressed in every conceivable shade of tan sidled past the pier’s metal nails in their Zegna Triple Stitch sneakers. Those now make up about 20 percent of the company’s business. American editors grew giddy at the sight of 6-foot-8 Chicago Bulls legend Scottie Pippen, wearing, one assumes, a cut-for-him sandy Zegna jacket. The N.B.A.-er Kevin Love stopped to discuss the Knicks’ playoff prospects. (They would win later that evening as guests were schlepping back to an after-party in L.A. proper.)
These Italy-takes-America fashion shows tend to form an amusing mishmash of cultures. Waiters in alabaster blazers held trays of Campari spritzes, and Italian fashion executives huddled together in too-tight pants. Close your eyes and è Milano.
But just beyond the boardwalk runway loomed the minivan-size sign for the Aviator Nation flagship. That label’s slouchy sweats are an ingrained uniform among the area’s wealthy-enough-to-wear-whatever locals.
Staring up at the borrowed runway was a crowd in the board shorts and flip-flops, items with, you know, just a bit less formality than what Zegna showed. Yet, if Gildo Zegna is to be believed, there could have been a Zegna man lurking somewhere in those onlookers. Perhaps on Monday, that guy will trade his sandals for $1,590 Triple Stitch sneakers. You never know.
Jacob Gallagher is a Times reporter covering fashion and style.
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