“We should dream bigger,” the Milanese designer Marco Zanini says, reflecting on the Democrats’ failure to inspire Gen Z voters in the U.S. election—but he quickly applies the lesson to fashion. “Maybe it seems unimportant to talk about fashion, especially now, but fashion is important. It’s how we visualize eras from the past—so how will we perceive today when we look back on it?”
Even though Zanini, 53, launched his eponymous brand only five years ago, it has quickly become a cult favorite among taste-makers. Yet few can get their hands on his microscopic output: to buy the Marco Zanini Collection, you have to be in Japan.
We are sitting in the designer’s kitchen in Milan, and he is wearing a brown velvet corduroy suit he commissioned for himself. Old jazz songs play softly from the living room—a candlelit den lined with art books and dotted with a few Svenskt Tenn sofas—and paintings and photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe.
Zanini is a former member of the fashion industry’s inner circle. In 2007, he led the revival of Halston, followed by prêt-à-porter at Rochas. By 2013, he was overseeing couture at Schiaparelli.
Recently, though, he has positioned himself as an outlier and contrarian.
In 2019, he invested his entire life savings into the Zanini collection—a miniature affair compared to his previous gigs—to indulge his taste for refined tailoring, the finest fabrics, and gracefully quiet women’s clothing.
He presented his debut collection, fall-winter 2019, at home, featuring tailored ribbon-tied blazers and kimono silk-slip dresses, inviting buyers from his 10 favorite boutiques—including Matches Fashion, in England, and Tiina the Store, in Amagansett, both now defunct. The clothes’ tomboy, gamine romanticism thrilled clients who hadn’t found such subtle attention to detail elsewhere, and—incredibly—all 10 buyers placed orders.
“Finally, independence,” he told Vogue at the time. “It’s a gamble, but this way feels more conscious, more authentic.”
But the momentum proved to be short-lived. When the pandemic hit, it took a toll on small brands. Zanini faced production challenges and considered winding down, but Arts & Science, a revered concept store with 15 locations across Japan, refused to let him go. In 2022, Zanini and the store teamed up to create exclusive men’s and women’s collections—a first for the retailer.
“Production is hard for Marco because he’s a one-man brand,” Sonya Park, the store’s founder, says, “but it would have been a shame to let him quit.” So she asked him: “What can we do to make you reconsider?”
Zanini designs his Arts & Science collections with the store’s custom-milled stock and archival textiles, working with Japanese craftspeople. As a result, his output, formerly made in Italy, now possesses a distinctly East Asian sensibility. “Japanese fabrics have a charm and a hand that is so unusual,” he says, “so the tailoring is softer, less structured.”
For his fall-winter 2024 collection, inspired by the British writer Vita Sackville-West, Zanini incorporated a playful animal print by the British artist Mark Hearld. Each silk trouser, skirt, and shirt is hand-stamped by Kyoto artisans using traditional screen-printing techniques. Zanini likens visiting these craftspeople to taking a “trip to Disneyland.”
Pulling titles from his bookshelves, he lays out photography volumes by Irving Penn and August Sander—and flips through portraits of bakers, butchers, farmers, and other laborers from a bygone era. These archetypal uniforms inspire his refined takes on Edwardian dresses, sailor coats, workwear, and other historical silhouettes, which he re-interprets with a modern eye.
The quality resonates. Pieces from Zanini’s collections for Arts & Science—produced in a range of just 5 to 30 per style—consistently sell out season after season.
Park hopes to expand the line with bespoke fabrics just for Zanini, but the designer is pleased with exclusivity. “Do you want to speak to a few people who understand you, or do you want to be a rock star?” he asks. “One approach is about staying true to yourself; the other is about becoming a persona.”
Today, with luxury brands losing profits almost across the board, the continual swap of creative directors—a flailing bid to inject excitement—has become a financier’s game. “Luxury is almost extinct,” Zanini says, throwing a tattooed hand in the air. “They don’t sell dreams anymore—they just sell products.”
“Do you want to speak to a few people who understand you, or do you want to be a rock star?”
The problem, he explains, is that, in big fashion companies, creative directors have to have collections approved by merchandisers and C.E.O.’s before they can put them on the runway. “Creativity should be the driving force. If there are no ideas,” he says, “it’s just stuff—banal stuff.”
Zanini’s own label sells “stuff” too, but they’re “products with their own little soul”—handcrafted and exactingly considered, without the sterilizing effect of merchandisers and executives.
“If you’re not allowed to do what you love,” he adds, “you have to build it yourself.” It’s a wise tenet for artists everywhere, but for a fashion industry that prizes revenue growth over free-thinking talent—it’s also a warning.
Laura Rysman is a Florence-based writer who contributes to The New York Times, serves as the central-Italy correspondent for Monocle, and is a contributing editor at Konfekt
