Ermenegildo Zegna

Ermenegildo Zegna's personal notebooks are stored in the Zegna archive. Inside them there are various information regarding the activity of the Wool Mill.

In 1932 Ermenegildo Zegna began the construction of a structure to be used for social welfare activities: a center for purchases, for health care and to spend leisure time.

The "Panoramica Zegna" is a road that owes its existence to the "green thought" of Ermenegildo Zegna and his ambitious projects for safeguarding and promoting the mountains in the Trivero area.

In 1938 work started on the construction of the road whose name reflects its most obvious characteristic (the panorama offered along the route) and the name of its originator and funder.

In the 1960s Ermenegildo left the company in the hands of his sons, Angelo and Aldo Zegna, who introduced the Ready-to-Wear in 1967 and opened the first Zegna boutique in Paris in 1980.

Today the Zegna Group is led by Ermenegildo (Gildo) Zegna as CEO and his cousin Paolo is Chairman.

The Mohair Trophy was set up in 1970 in collaboration with the Mohair Board to encourage South African growers to improve the quality of their kid mohair and at the same time secure the best fleeces for Lanificio Ermenegildo Zegna. Ermenegildo Zegna Group is one of the biggest buyers of this product and in some years buys up most of the best quality production. The fiber is used to make a number of fabrics with unique luster and crease-resistance. Over time however, mohair tends to thicken, so Zegna only uses kid mohair from animals under ten months.

The Cashmere Trophy, assigned for the first time in June 1985 and just for two editions, was set up as an incentive to herders in Inner Mongolia to maintain and improve the characteristics of their goats. Cashmere is one of the most highly prized natural fiber fleeces and has always been an emblem of warmth and class, while Inner Mongolia (northern China) is where the world's finest quality cashmere is produced, thanks to the particular species of animal and the environmental conditions they live in. The trophy is a 1,500 g silver platter measuring 50 cm in diameter and hand engraved by Florentine master silversmith Brandimarte Guscelli.

Ermenegildo Zegna, with the Australian Superfine Wool Growers Association, set up the Vellus Aureum Trophy, the prize for the finest and most highly valued Merino wool fleece produced. Only fleeces with an average fineness of under 14 micron are eligible. From 2002 to 2012 the winner was given a replica of the Vellus Aureum made by the Swiss sculptor Not Vital and, in recent years, the equivalent in gold of the weight of the winning fleece (since 2011 a fixed quantity of 750 grams).

To celebrate the Vellus Aureum winner of the 2013 edition, a new trophy has been created by American artist Kiki Smith. The original sculpture “The Sun’s yarn” is preserved in The Zegna Archive in Trivero. It is a special edition sculpture conceived as a composition of four elements of the wool cycle: the sheep, a spindle and a ball of wool. Arranged together on a piece of Zegna’s exclusive new Trofeo Comfort fabric in pied-de-poule pattern, the trophy pays homage to the longstanding tradition of excellence in Australian ultrafine wools. Thirteen copies have been made, which will be used for the next several years to award the winners of the Vellus Aureum Trophy.