THE SECOND COMING
In Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, a genre-defining film replete with iconic set pieces, there is one truly emotionally satisfying scene: when the assembled members of the Corleone family each bow and kiss the hand of Michael Corleone, the man who has saved and resurrected their future. And while far less resplendent in pageantry than any royal or papal coronation, it is somehow even more stirring to us. Because, during the time we’ve been emotionally invested in Michael, we’ve witnessed his quietly reflective brilliance, his unerring, almost prescient, insight, and his soft-spoken courage that belies his fearless geometry. Most of all, we’ve seen the incandescent intellect that burns within him.
With his typical modesty, Alessandro Sartori, once the Head Designer of Z Zegna, the former Artistic Director of Berluti, and now the anointed creative leader of Zegna Group — and the man tasked with leading it through the somewhat precarious shoals it finds itself in — deflects comparisons to Michael Corleone. Yet the parallels between their journeys are irrefutable. Both fit social anthropologist Joseph Campbell’s paradigm for the journey of a hero like a kidskin glove. As with all of Campbell’s heroes, from Gandhi to Luke Skywalker, Sartori was born with extraordinary abilities that were at first hidden from sight but nurtured by his seamstress mother. Then we get a first inkling of his creative powers at Z Zegna, where he was instrumental in constructing the precursor to the merger between sportswear and tailoring that has become the most powerful theme in modern menswear. Then he was called away from his homeland of Trivero, the spiritual heart of Ermenegildo Zegna, to step onto the global stage by transforming Berluti, the world’s most iconic shoe brand, into one of the most vibrantly dynamic, seductive and relevant menswear brands.
At Berluti he unveiled his full vision for sports couture by introducing the world to the first true high-luxury sneaker, a shoe that has become the most imitated and the most commercially important category in modern luxury.
