Photo: Courtesy of Ermenegildo Zegna x Fear of God

Alessandro Sartori of Ermenegildo Zegna and Jerry Lorenzo of Fear of God were first introduced through a mutual friend in Los Angeles about a year and a half ago. Today, standing together surrounded by the first-season fruits of the new collaborative venture that meeting led to, Lorenzo said: “I think we’re inextricably tied together through destiny. I think some things are written out of your control, and shortly 10 minutes after we met, we knew. Although if you look at our brands aesthetically they’re kind of far apart, our spirits and our desire to provide something new and our [imagining] of what that might look like was really very close. So we felt that in order to provide this new language, we needed to work together.”

The Ermenegildo Zegna x Fear of God collection is no tentative capsule. At a preview of the presentation this morning, we saw 39 looks, including shoes and accessories, that together offer a new and total wardrobe aesthetic. And this aesthetic is not limited to men: Much of the collection has been shot on women. Below is an edited version of the conversation that flowed as we drifted through the rails and unpicked the backstory of this intriguing new partnership.

Alessandro Sartori: “Of course I knew Jerry’s collections before meeting him.… I liked the level of quality and sophistication he was delivering with his sportswear. It was very accurate not only in the garments’ design but also in the color palette and the use of fabrics…. When we met, it was as if we knew each other, and the conversation quickly turned to what we could do together. But it was not about the budget or contract, or SKUs, or a commercial briefing—because that’s a trap. We’re just having a conversation about how we can convey a message.”

Vogue Runway: “Jerry, you just mentioned a new language. What is that language articulating?”

Jerry Lorenzo: “I think between what’s happening culturally in fashion and what’s happening in tailoring, there’s a huge disconnect. I think my customer and I see tailoring as intimidating, so how do we make tailoring less intimidating? How do we make suiting and tailoring feel like a hoodie and a pair of sweatpants, something that you can slide into easily and something that fits comfortably with you and something that allows you to be appropriate for all occasions? I think there’s a maturation that is happening from a youth side, and I think there’s also an easiness that an older gentleman is looking for as well. So we both saw this space that we wanted to play in, and that is both easy and sophisticated.”

Vogue Runway: “Tailoring has been looking to find a new lease on life ever since the financial downturn of 2008, while the span of streetwear has come under question more recently. Even Virgil Abloh said he thought streetwear is going to die.…”

Lorenzo: “I think what Virgil was saying was that he was asking for our perspective to not be considered ‘street.’ Because although we cut and sew hoodies and sweatpants and T-shirts, we put just as much love into them as goes into a suit…. I hope the stigma of what’s being considered ‘streetwear’ could die, and we could all just be considered creatives. And my class of young designers that are now coming up, we’re maturing, and we have different desires and different occasions and different ways that we want to present ourselves. We still want to present ourselves within that communication of easiness and effortlessness and luxury, but at a higher level, through tailoring and fabrication.”

Vogue Runway: “And on his side throughout all his time at Zegna, Alessandro has been interrogating the stigma of formality in tailoring by reimagining it.…”

Lorenzo: “When I saw his shapes, I knew it would be an easy conversation because he was mixing and tailoring with, you know, some of these other shapes.”

Sartori: “Answering your question: For me, trends are not really dying. Even when you don’t see them, they live on in your retro mind. A very important change in the market is the totally different approach to styling and wearing clothes. Each one of us is styling differently. We open our wardrobe, and even with the same pieces, we apply a different style and wear them in a different way. Because we are freer.”

Vogue Runway: “Speaking of freedom to wear, you’ve shot the looks in this collection on women as well as men. For Zegna that’s a pretty big deal.”

Lorenzo: “This collection is 100% made for a man with a woman in mind. I mean, we’ve always used women in our campaigns. I love the way my wife looks when she goes in my closet and throws on a hoodie or she throws on a shirt, and it’s oversized…. Us casting women in the campaign is just a way of saying: ‘Hey, this is for you too, and it actually looks very dope.’”

At this point, we put down our coffees and dug through the collection. Pieces that most strongly articulated a new position—a place in between ‘suiting’ and ‘streetwear’ but also elevated beyond those inadequate boundaries of definition—included a collarless cashmere “suit” with patch pockets (like nearly all the pockets here) and a drawstring pant available in Donegal-flecked gray or black. This seemed like ideal air-travel attire but also an ideal workwear option for a creative who wishes to echo masculine dress codes without declaring his subordination to them. This collarless shape continued into crispy wool jackets presented with cummerbund-creased trousers and turtlenecks in the place of shirts: a slightly martial arts iteration of traditional eveningwear. Very interesting was a half-zip rib-knit, neck-paneled tracksuit whose body was made of washed black silk. This had a drop-armed early-’90s silhouette but with none of the garishness of the sportswear of the time: As a piece of formal menswear in the tradition of sportswear, it was compelling.

Perhaps because the cut echoes the suits and jackets many of Sartori and Lorenzo’s target customers will recall their fathers slogging to the office in, what collared jackets and overcoats there were had a calibration of high-ish, wide-ish notch collar and oversized shoulder that whispered of the ’80s—a boxy, forgiving silhouette somewhere between a Talking Heads big suit and Armani’s soft shoulder. The denim, produced in Los Angeles by Lorenzo and his team (alongside a brushed cotton shirt in green), featured a faded wash, a straight leg, a high-ish rise, and a wider than usual waistband. Arguably the most instantly lovable piece (because that silk tracksuit is amazing, and the cashmere pieces too) was a work shirt/jacket in high-quality calf leather that would function as a trophy piece but also express a casual and unprecious manner. Furthermore, once you recovered from the pain of its first scratch or stain, its patina would become richly marked with the experience of the wearing.

Lorenzo and Sartori seemed healthily aligned: two menswear specialists whose instincts are different but akin, whose thoughts are sourced from opposite sides of the same page. It will be interesting to see how this project develops and how their proposed shift to the optics of menswear categories will be received by consumers.