VILLA ZEGNA, WORN BY LIGHT

 

    original images and video courtesy ©Zegna

Dubai offered Alessandro Sartori a landscape demanding a singular form of attention. Inside the Opera House, reimagined as Villa Zegna, the Spring/Summer 2026 collection breathed in measured proximity to the heat, the air, and the desert sand. The setting dictated the rhythm of the cloth, framing a wardrobe calibrated for the honesty of exposure and the grace of movement. 

Sartori’s narrative began with fabric intelligence. There is a profound ethics in the way these materials behave. Linen, poplin, and silk suits appeared as though washed into softened stripes, their surfaces already yielding to the body’s heat. Silk tailoring reached a ghostly lightness, suits weighing a mere three hundred grams, articulating a value system where portability becomes a spiritual asset. The construction remained precise, achieving an ease born of balance and structural harmony. 

Leather entered this sanctuary in a transformed register. Washed and softened until it reached absolute pliancy, it moved as a mirror to the body, a second skin responsive to the smallest gesture. Knit leathers, sanded hemp twills, and rustic hand-spun silks expanded a tactile vocabulary grounded in material behaviour and the truth of the surface. This is the Zegna strength: innovation expressed through stillness. 

The palette remained faithful to the house’s Italian nomenclature, a mineral base warmed by the earth. Bianco Oasi, mastice, and burro di montagna established a quiet foundation, while deeper tones of fumo and barolo anchored the collection, providing a necessary weight to garments designed for weightlessness. Greens and cognacs appeared as tonal pulses, shaped by their own saturation. 

The silhouettes expressed a generosity held in check by control. Jackets adopted the unhurried weight of shirts; double-layered Nehru collars introduced a vertical structure that felt like a quiet correction of the posture. Deconstructed blazers fastened low, and tailored shorts paired with summer coats responded directly to the climate. The Il Conte jacket returned with boxier proportions, aligned with fluid trousers that seemed to ignore gravity altogether. 

Accessories, soft moccasins folding around the foot, and capacious bags. reinforced this logic of mobility. Each element supported Sartori’s exploration of a life built through repetition and material refinement. 

The collection felt like an evolution shaped by craft and climate. It was the evidence of use, the evidence of environment, and the beauty of a wardrobe that had finally learned how to breathe.