Zegna, one of the few luxury brands in the world to control the entire production process of its creations – from raw materials to finished products – has always been a purveyor of beautifully designed and lavishly made suits.

“We’ve always been very strong with the tailored suit and tie, which if you think about it, hides your personality because you put on a suit like that – the famous power suit – to feel powerful even though in reality your personality is not always reflected in what you’re wearing,” Sartori says.

While the brand has not completely rejected its previous core values, it was definitely ripe for a bit of disruption. An evolution “also due to the open-mindedness of the management and CEO”, he adds, “because other brands unfortunately have managers who are not very open and don’t understand how to move forward”.

Known for his impeccable personal style and often referred to as one of the best-dressed men in the industry, Sartori believes that while Covid-19 accelerated the pivot towards leisurewear at the expense of tailoring, it was bound to happen anyway, sooner or later.

“When you unleash the idea that people who before never wanted to be seen without a suit, or a tailored shirt, or a jacket and trousers, discover a whole new wardrobe of basics like joggers, knits, T-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies … when they go back out in the workforce or into the world, they’re not going back to their old ways of dressing,” he says.

He calls this shift “a historic game changer”. “It really puts the focus on comfort,” he says. “It creates a new silhouette that blends leisurewear with the techniques of tailoring. Things like our overshirts and knitwear and sporty pants actually do have inner workings that are very sartorial but are hidden because of what you see on the outside.”

Unlike other luxury brands going through revamps that fell prey to the demands of the market, jumping on the bandwagon of whatever was trendy and rejecting their DNA, Zegna has taken a gradual approach, which Sartori believes was the right thing to do. In other words, don’t expect the company to come up with logo-laden T-shirts or “ugly sneakers” any time soon.

“We worked on this utilitarian silhouette and elevated it but this is not that distant from who we are and just represents who we are today,” he says. “If Zegna had gone too high fashion or total streetwear, whether or not it would have been successful, it wouldn’t have represented us in an honest way.”

Honesty is a word that comes up often when talking to Sartori and other executives from the company, which is still family owned and based in the Oasi Zegna, a nature park where it develops its famous textiles. “We changed but we still have all these values that we adhere to. The Oasi Zegna is a beautiful open-air space with thousands of trees and plants, which is like a pillar of our values. When you have that, you can have new values from an aesthetic point of view but still keep the core values intact,” he says.

Sartori, who is a fan of menswear garments from the 40s and 50s, and collects them alongside military uniforms and vintage cars, is very much a hands-on, product-focused designer. Listening to him go on and on about a fibre like cashmere – which he compares to “a good wine made with high quality grapes and the right processes” – or how knitwear is “the garment of the future” because of its flexibility and democratic approach, you can tell that for him product reigns supreme.

Marrying function and form is at the core of what he does, but while practicality is important – take Zegna’s signature overshirt, an elevated take on the chore coat that comes with handy pockets – the design element is still vital, something he likes to point out when Zegna is named (as it often is) as one of the brands leading the recent “quiet luxury” wave.

“In the case of Zegna, it’s not really quiet because we actually hold fashion shows that have design elements that are very important, and very elaborate silhouettes and colours,” he says.

“[Quiet luxury] is something that has always existed but those articles started a conversation and people say, ‘Wow, this is really a thing.’ I have friends who work for other brands, and now they talk about Zegna and those two, three other brands associated with quiet luxury, while before they didn’t.”

His focus on perfecting products is also evident in the success of the Triple Stitch, a shoe that existed before his tenure but only took off after he made subtle changes to it, most of them functional.

“It’s incredible how an item that was already around can be rethought and then become so successful,” he says. “Originally it was very heavy and padded with a lot of material inside so it was also quite warm and we made it lighter. The sole was quite hard so it wasn’t easy to walk in them.”

He adds that another key to the popularity of the shoes was that they were shown as a key element of the Zegna silhouette rather than on their own as mere objects without any context.

“It’s not a classic sneaker but more of a leisurewear shoe. It also has a strong identity because of the three laces,” he says. “If you look at other luxury sneakers, they tend to look the same and have nothing to make them stand out but this one is very recognisable and still very subtle.”

Subtlety – another way to express quiet luxury, stealth wealth or whatever you want to call it – was at the heart of Zegna and Sartori’s work long before they became hot commodities on TikTok, but the designer won’t let this new-found attention distract him.

After all, he learned the basics of the trade from his dressmaker mother and says that he shares her enthusiasm for making things.

“I’ve always found it fascinating that from something very flat you can create something that moves in 3D and can make someone feel beautiful and happy,” he says. “I just got a message from a friend who was visiting our store in Paris and he wrote: ‘I really need to go not only to see your creations but also to feel good about myself and to dress up for the sake of my spirit’. When you read something like this, you really feel like, ‘Wow!’”