Zegna is no stranger to the Chateau Marmont. This past awards season, the brand hosted a pre-Oscars dinner with nominee Stellan Skarsgård, who also starred in a short film produced by the brand, which was filmed at the storied (West) Hollywood haunt. Javier Bardem, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Wagner Moura and Ludwig Göransson — most of whom worked on Oscar-nominated films — also got ready for the awards ceremony in Zegna, at the Chateau.
So it’s no wonder Ermenegildo “Gildo” Zegna, executive chair of Ermenegildo Zegna Group, looks so at home by Los Angeles’s Villa Zegna, which has taken over the cottages at the Chateau Marmont. It’s the sixth iteration of Villa Zegna, following editions in locations including Shanghai, New York and Miami. At the West Hollywood hotspot, Gildo was gearing up for the brand’s Malibu Spring/Summer 2027 show. (Gildo was Group CEO up until last November, when he appointed Gianluca Tagliabue to the role as part of a wider leadership structure shake-up.)
California was a no-brainer for the executive chair — it’s now one of Zegna’s strongest US markets, in part thanks to South Coast Plaza, where he spent time before arriving in LA. “It used to be more New York, but you have to be [in California] now,” Gildo says, sat at a shady corner table in the hotel’s red and white courtyard. He notes the crossover with locals and Asian and Latino tourists as a draw, and puts this down to California’s warm climate, likening it to Europeans flocking to Madrid, as opposed to cooler Northern cities. “In retail, keeping track of these flows is important,” he says.
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He’s not the only one that’s clocked the US resilience. Over the past month, a host of European luxury brands have headed stateside, starting with Dior on May 18, which showed at LACMA, followed by Gucci and Louis Vuitton in New York and, on Thursday, Hermès held its Spring/Summer 2027 show in the hills of Bel Air — just a drive down Sunset Boulevard, and back up into the hills, from Villa Zegna.
Malibu, though, was a surprise choice of show location for many who are familiar with the brand. Sure, plenty of Malibu’s wealthy residents surely have Zegna’s cashmere sweaters and linen shirts in their closets, but it’s not the first brand you’d associate with the beach.
While the Pacific Coast city aligns with Zegna’s now-main focus on what Gildo calls ‘luxury casual’, the real reason is to impress the guests, and to show them a very Los Angeles time. About half of Zegna event attendees are the same from one event to the next, Gildo says. “If you have seen the three shows before, you want the next one to look different,” he says. “We are selling emotions, we are selling experiences, we are selling memories — that’s what they like.”
