Ermengildo Zegna changes logo 111 years

Ermenegildo Zegna has announced a historic rebranding a few weeks after its first listing on the stock exchange. The name of the founder will disappear and only the surname will remain while the logo will be updated with a modern font with capital letters surmounted by an orange and black band. The inspiration for the new logo is the SP 323, also known as Strada Provinciale 232 Panoramica Zegna, built by Patriarch Ermenegildo in 1938 in the mountains of the Trivero region, reforesting the slopes of the mountains with half a million conifers and giving life to the nature reserve now known as Oasi Zegna – which was also the location of the brand's SS21 show. The Zegna Panoramic Road, which seen from afar also has a shape reminiscent of the letter Z, thus becomes both a symbol of the ethical commitment that was the basis of the entrepreneurial philosophy of the founding family, now in its third generation with Gildo Zegna, and the symbol of the brand, thus constituting a continuity and not a break with the past. The new logo and the new orange and black trademark, inspired by the precious vicuña fabric, will be officially presented with a new collection that will be presented on Friday 3 December.

This turning point comes, as we said, just before a historic IPO which, according to WWD, stands at around a market capitalization of about 2.5 billion dollars. The new listing, together with the synergy with the investment fund Investindustrial, will allow Zegna to increase its global expansion and acquire new manufacturers by strengthening its production chain. The Zegna family will maintain its control over the company with a majority stake of 62%, Investindustrial will have an 11% and the remaining 27% will remain open to investors, bringing the inital enterprise value to about 3.2 billion dollars. The announcement of the listing on the stock exchange and the rebranding crown a year in which the brand has seen a very rapid recovery from the economic impact of the lockdown: in the first six months of 2021 the brand's revenue had already risen by 49.9% with an increase in sales of 36.1% for a figure that was around 465.9 million dollars. This growth was fuelled by direct-to-consumer sales in the US, UAE and China as well as the opening of seven new boutiques in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

In this month of December, therefore, we should see the definitive crowning of a new phase in the life of the brand, which has assumed a role of growing protagonism in the international fashion scene by starting both successful collaborations such as the one with Fear of God presented last year but also entrepreneurial projects related to Made in Italy such as the acquisition, together with the Prada Group, of the historic Filati Biagioli Modesto manufacture which, as the words spoken by Gildo Zegna last July about the strategic strengthening of the supply chain suggest, will not be the only one that the Zegna Group will score in the future. All this, then, close to the next Milan Fashion Week in January, which will certainly represent a new opportunity to consolidate the aesthetic shift of the brand carried out since the "second advent" of Alessandro Sartori to the artistic direction of the brand in June 2016.