The Italian luxury brand transformed its headquarters in Milan’s design district into an interactive exhibit designed to connect high fashion and environmental consciousness
Milan’s Salone del Mobile concerns itself primarily with built environments. Similarly, many brand activations during the world’s largest furniture fair have focused on abstracting their central ethos to create unique design concepts. It’s only fitting that Italian luxury house Zegna’s launch event for their nature-inspired book Born in Oasi—which also included a large scale exhibition, public flower display, store takeover, and newstand activation—instead recentered the conversation on planet Earth, sharing the story of the brand’s massive Oasi Zegna natural park in the Alps to eager audiences.
Oasi Zegna covers nearly 100 kilometers of Northern Italy’s mountainous Piedmont region, the same province where the brand was born in 1910. While sustainability in luxury is a relatively new phenomenon, Ermenegildo Zegna was an incredible steward of the environment during his lifetime. In the early 20th century, reforesting roughly 500,000 trees surrounding his wool mill. The result of all of this work would eventually be realized through the creation of the park in 1993, which is publicly accessible to this day. Born in Oasi beautifully renders this story using original images alongside archival documents from the brand’s century-long history. Quite fittingly, the volume is even composed of paper derived from recycled components of fabrics from past collections, showing a conscious commitment to generating a smaller carbon footprint.
Born in Oasi is a part of the brand’s larger project called Oasi Zegna in the World, aimed at bringing nature to a global high-fashion audience. The launch is also accompanied by an interactive exhibit at Zegna’s headquarters located in the city’s design district. Each part of the experience interprets elements of the Oasi project, with some rooms festooned with vegetation taken from Zegna Oasi. In the central corridor, the ground is lined with leaves, and throughout the space, editions of Born in Oasi are stacked to look like soil, with trees shooting out from the stacks. The overall sensibility of this showcase is a window into Zegna’s genuine commitment to the environment. This is best summarized by a large quote on the exterior wall of the installation: “The second best thing we do is clothing. The first is Oasi Zegna.”
In partnership with the Municipality of Milan, the brand has also taken over the flower boxes in the region’s iconic Piazza Duomo, a move to bring people closer to natural ecosystems even in the heart of one of Italy’s largest cities. The Zegna team has transformed their Montapoleone store as well as publisher Rizzoli’s shop in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele to promote the launch with immaculate window displays containing the book and photo ready backdrops.
For those visiting for Salone, the installation is live at the brand’s Via Savona headquarters until the 21st. The Born in Oasi publication is available online and in Zegna stores globally.