For its Summer 2027 Collection, Zegna Artistic Director Alessandro Sartori drew on la villeggiatura, a centuries-old Italian summer ritual rooted in the aristocratic and bourgeois tradition of relocating to the countryside or the coast for the season. Originating in 18th-century northern Italy, la villeggiatura was a social practice as much as a leisure one. Entire families packed up their lives and moved to a villa in the hills or by the sea for weeks at a time. They brought their routines, their staff, and their wardrobes with them. Sartori turned this ritual into a wardrobe. Then took it to Malibu Pier this June.
The Show landed as the third major runway moment in Los Angeles. After Dior at LACMA in May. And Hermès in Bel Air the night before. Rami Malek, Mahershala Ali, Paul Dano, Stellan Skarsgård, Gael García Bernal, Roman Coppola and Soo Joo Park took their seats as the Pacific rolled in behind the runway. The Pier, built in 1905, five years before Zegna was founded in the Piedmont hills in 1910, became an Italian beach club for the evening. Striped umbrellas. Orange and yellow deck chairs. Trays of citrus cocktails.
Zegna Summer 2027 Collection: La Villeggiatura Wardrobe
La villeggiatura calls for a specific wardrobe. Lightweight. Considered. Pieces built to carry a man from the beach to the terrace to the dinner table without a second thought. The palette pulls straight from the Italian coastline. Aquamarine, algae, sea green, rabbit, dune, and teak move through every category. Often woven into striped canvas totes and weekend bags. Striped suits pair with matching shirts. Color-blocking at its most nonchalant. Safari jackets arrive belted or cut as short-sleeved overshirts. Blazers carry hidden adjustable belts. Worn cinched at the waist in the morning. Left loose by aperitivo.
The shirts are where Sartori's material obsession surfaces. Silk. Nappa. Croc. Nubuck. A linen brushed to resemble peach fuzz. All cut boxy, all engineered with swappable collars. The same shirt worn three different ways across the same week.
The textile revelation of the season arrives as a black button-front bomber. Vertical stripes at first glance. An open weave of knitted suede on the outside, nubuck pressed against the skin. Two materials fused into one fabric in Zegna's ateliers in Trivero. Five generations of craft compressed into a single jacket.
Villa Zegna at the Chateau Marmont
The Show moved from the Pier to the Chateau Marmont. Zegna transformed six bungalows of the legendary Hollywood hotel into Villa Zegna, an invitation-only Italian summer residence for 240 guests. The mood sat somewhere between a Slim Aarons photograph and an Italian summer memory. Archival installations pulled from TOP, the magazine Zegna published between 1967 and 1980. An Italian-style newsstand. Poolside conversations. Hospitality staff behaving less like service and more like characters from a long summer the guests were already part of.
Inside the bungalows, the Zegna Summer 2027 Collection is on display. Guests can shop runway looks directly. Made-to-measure appointments follow. The same savoir-faire available on the Pier, now available to one client at a time.
