Zegna’s Alessandro Sartori and The Elder Statesman’s Greg Chait Bring The Oasi of Cashmere to L.A.
It’s the meeting of passions — passions of cashmere.
The words are proclaimed by actor Daniel Brühl, the face of the Zegna and The Elder Statesman partnership. First unveiled in February during Paris Fashion Week, the collaborative project is now introducing its campaign. Brühl lends his voice but at the center of this story are creators Alessandro Sartori, artistic director of Zegna, and Greg Chait of The Elder Statesman.
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“The union of Zegna’s craftmanship and the velocity of color and spontaneity of The Elder Statesman,” is how Brühl describes the work. He’s been immersed in Oasi Zegna, a forest in the Italian Alps and location of Zegna’s wool mill.
“I was so blown away by it,” L.A.-based Chait said of his first visit to the grounds — 100 square kilometers of land.
The designer was sitting in a suite at the Sunset Tower on Tuesday morning alongside Sartori. The two, who met through mutual friends, are co-hosting a celebratory event at Maxfield, one of the collaboration’s retail partners, and a VIP dinner in the Hollywood Hills.
It was in 1910 that brand founder Ermenegildo Zegna planted the first tree in the area surrounding the factory, according to the company, with now more than 500,000 standing tall. A connection with nature, through this history and site, is the messaging behind the new imagery. The star is the cashmere thread, in this case coming from Mongolia.
“To see the school of spinning and the dyeing and washing, I mean all the processes before what the yarn is then doing, is quite peculiar,” said Sartori. “It’s beautiful.” (Zegna has committed to certifying its Oasi Cashmere as fully traceable by 2024.)
“I don’t think enough can be said about that,” added Chait. “Just because most people don’t really talk about that. But I feel like a lot of the work is done in the fiber selection and ideation behind making yarn, what it’s supposed to do. Most people don’t really know that. But that’s a really important part.”
Brühl made sure to highlight Oasi Zegna in a statement on the collaboration: “What the visionary Ermenegildo established over a hundred years ago continues to this day. A place where the breathtaking nature and the people living and working there are respected and cherished. If you go to Oasi Zegna you will see the dedicated, passionate expertise of everyone working for Zegna. Every thread, every button, every single detail is homemade. The philosophy of the Zegna family and the creative mastermind of Alessandro Sartori are the reason why Zegna’s men’s fashion is the most outstanding.”
Honoring craftmanship is at the root of the project. Zegna has decades of luxury know-how, with Sartori bringing a modern touch. And The Elder Statesman has been celebrated for its handmade cashmere sweaters in psychedelic colors and prints since being launched by Chait in L.A. in 2007.
“They say it takes a village,” Chait said of the collaboration process with Zegna. “So, there were a lot of people working on this to make it happen.”
That includes Bailey Hunter, creative director of The Elder Statesman.
Together they’ve created a line of vibrant knits. There’s a playfulness — California ease meets Italian sophistication — while utilizing a palette reminiscent of the coastal West Coast: fire orange, bright yellow, forest green and ocean blue but in sun-bleached hues. It’s unisex, showcasing cardigans, T-shirts, pants and accessories. Among the goods are yellow-green plaid sweatpants made of silk and cashmere for $3,550; a striped multicolored polo sweater made of cashmere and wool for $2,350; a wool bucket hat for $450, and alpaca loafers for $1,390.
The fit, oversized “but not too oversized,” noted Sartori, came from “a very similar vision — we like the idea that you can as a woman borrow pieces from your boyfriend, brother, partner, friend. We like the idea that some garments are good just in one size. Of course, you can buy a smaller or larger size, but there are many, many good pieces which are good in one size for many different people…You have the right proportion between being comfortable and cool.”
Asked what they admire most about each other’s approach using cashmere, the two brought up their shared love of artistry and technique.
“I’m such a fiber nerd and manufacturing nerd that I knew what Zegna was up to for a long time,” Chait said. “When they’re getting into a fiber or expanding on a fiber, I knew that it was going to be a full 360, 100 percent thorough approach to it. And that’s what I admired.”
“The Elder family, they all have the same human touch and feeling and passion of working,” Sartori chimed in. “Sometimes it’s a very long process. At the end, the product is beautiful…But behind that is a full story of experience and people and trained hands and human feel.”
There’s a certain electric energy in a factory, said Chait.
“It’s amazing to see the crazy — crazy in a good way — crazy look in the eyes of the people that work in the facility,” continued Chait of his visit in Italy. “In their eyes, you can just tell. You can go to places and see who’s really passionate. It’s actually really similar to, like, a Michelin-star kitchen. There’s a lot of coverage on food in today’s world so like you can see it in the show ‘The Bear’ or whatever. But that intensity does happen behind the scenes.”
It’s critical to keep that skill alive, they echoed.
“One of the biggest [worries] we have is that when those people are retiring we lose that know-how,” said Sartori. “We keep working and investing in building. They can [share] that know-how to someone else after. This is also one reason why many people in the factory are generations of the same, the grandfather, father and the son.”
“We have the same, smaller obviously, but we have the same thing,” Chait jumped in. “And that’s why I knew that we were kindred spirits once we connected that way.”
“We share a vision of love for what we do and the vision to preserve, always,” said Sartori, later adding, “For sure, [there are] more things to come.”
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