Alessandro Sartori has been shaping menswear since 1989, when he joined Zegna straight out of design school in his native Biella, Italy. He left in 2011 to become artistic director at Berluti, then returned to Zegna in 2016 as artistic director over the entire brand, a role that has made him one of the most consistent voices in luxury menswear for going on four decades.
What sets Sartori apart is how directly he rejects the idea that his job is about fashion at all. As with hairdressers and make up artists, he has said, designers work touches the human body so we need to be respectful and ensure that people feel like themselves. He treats design closer to a service profession than an art form, building pieces meant to be lived in rather than looked at once on a runway.
That shows up in how he separates his own work from two extremes he sees across the industry. There is classic tailoring, he has explained, and there is experimental tailoring, but there is a beautiful middle ground where you can express a fashion forward point of view while also remembering that the garments you are designing need to be worn by real people. His own pieces lean on lightness and fluidity, built as multifunctional items, a jacket meant to move from a morning meeting into an evening dinner without a wardrobe change in between.