He built educational facilities and schools, places for sport and the arts, for people, and cared for the environment too.
— Anna Zegna, speaking about her grandfather Ermenegildo in 2015
Zegna began neither with perfume nor with tailored suits. It began with a wool mill in the northern Italian town of Trivero. Founder Ermenegildo Zegna did not separate the work of making fine fabrics from the lives of the people and the place that supported it.
Wool in the mill, ink in the study, mountain air entering through a car window. The 2026 fragrance collection Memorie takes the places and objects surrounding the founder as its subjects. A house that has cultivated the feel of clothing now seeks to tell its history through the sense of smell.
Essential Information
Brand name: ZEGNA
Founded: 1910 (textile business)
Founder: Ermenegildo Zegna
Place of origin: Trivero, Piedmont, Italy
Official website: ZEGNA
The Founder and the Brand’s Origins
1910: An Eighteen-Year-Old Founder and a Wool Mill in Trivero
Ermenegildo was born in Trivero on January 2, 1892. In 1910, at eighteen, he began a textile business in the town. His brothers Edoardo and Mario and business partner Costanzo Giardino Vitri were also part of the company at its foundation. The house later known by its founder’s name began with fabric making by family members and collaborators.
The aim was to make the most beautiful fabrics in the world. To do so, he sourced fine natural fibers directly from their places of origin, wove them in Italy, and sent them overseas. Before selling finished clothing, the choice of raw materials and textile quality were already central to the work.
By the late 1920s, the mill employed more than 700 people, and in 1938 Zegna Woollens Corporation was established in America to advance fabric exports. It grew from a single northern Italian mill into a business delivering fabric across borders.
Local Initiatives That Nurtured Schools, Forests, and a Mountain Road
Ermenegildo connected the beauty of a product with the beauty of the environment in which it was made. In the 1930s, he developed facilities such as a school, hospital, and swimming pool in the town and began planting conifers around the mill. He sought to nurture the mill where people worked, the town where they lived, and the mountain environment as one place.
Construction of the first section of the Panoramica Zegna mountain road began in 1938. The road was intended to make the mountains accessible, reduce isolation, and open new possibilities for the local economy and tourism. Building the road from the town toward Bielmonte, at an altitude of 1,500 meters, proceeded alongside reforestation and improvements to the surrounding environment.
By 1952, the road reached the foot of Monte Marca, and in 1957 the Bielmonte ski resort began operating. In addition to the road itself, walking paths, viewpoints, accommodation, and recreational facilities emerged. Behind today’s perfumes taking mountain roads and forests as their subjects is this landscape shaped over many years.
Ermenegildo died on November 18, 1966. His family continued the local initiatives he had begun, and the third generation established Oasi Zegna in 1993. Fondazione Zegna was also founded in 2000; his granddaughter Anna and others carry his thinking forward to the next generation.
From Fabric to Clothing, and Then to Perfume
His sons Aldo and Angelo expanded the business from fabric into clothing. Ready-to-wear was introduced in 1967, and a factory producing it opened in Novara in 1968. In 1972, the Su Misura service, tailoring garments to the individual’s body, also began. The skill of creating wearable forms joined the skill of weaving materials.
In fragrance, Essenza di Zegna appeared in 2003. This was a separate milestone from the founding of the textile business in 1910. A fragrance licensing agreement with Estée Lauder followed in 2011, and Essenze was introduced in 2012.
The early Essenze collection used Italian bergamot at different intensities in five scents, each focusing on materials such as mandarin, patchouli, or iris. Bergamot, for which the house secured its own harvest in Calabria, was a distinctive material in its fragrance-making at this time.
In Uomo, released in 2013, perfumer Alberto Morillas combined bergamot with a fragrance material called Violettyne Captive. It was an exploration of bringing a natural material and new fragrance technology together in one scent.
We were not prepared to compromise on the character of the scent or the brand’s DNA.
— Trudi Loren, responsible for fragrance development at Estée Lauder, at the 2012 presentation of Uomo
An interest in fine raw materials and a fragrance identity true to the house: maintaining both, Zegna has developed expression beyond clothing. From Essenze’s material-focused compositions to Memorie in 2026, with six scents centered on the founder’s places and objects, the way the stories are constructed has also changed.
The Brand’s Commitments
Creating Memorie: Perfumers Visit the Founder’s Places
Memorie was created by three perfumers: Dominique Ropion (in Japanese), Fabrice Pellegrin (in Japanese), and Quentin Bisch. They visited the area and took their experiences back into their creative work. Through different settings, including the mill, study, roads, and forest floor, the collection imagines the founder’s life.
Il Lanificio takes the wool mill as its subject. What Pellegrin encountered there was more than the process of wool becoming fabric.
When I first entered the wool mill, I felt embraced by a sweet, reassuring smell.
— Fabrice Pellegrin, on creating Il Lanificio
He expressed that enveloping sensation through Tahitian vanilla, a suede accord, and sandalwood. An accord is a coherent scent built by combining several fragrance materials. Here, the softness of wool and textiles is transferred into sweetness and the feel of creamy woods. What is interesting is the discovery of warmth in materials touched by human hands within the subject of looms and a factory.
A Car and a Forest after Rain: Choosing Materials to Express Air and Earth
A Trivero begins with the founder’s car, a Lancia Aurelia. Driving along a mountain road with the windows open, cold air enters the car. Bisch sought to turn this scene in motion into scent.
A Trivero captures the moment of leaving a familiar place and stepping into the unknown.
— Quentin Bisch, on creating A Trivero
Against the freshness of lavender, myrrh was chosen not only for resinous warmth but also for a mineral quality suggestive of mountain and forest air. Myrrh is a resin obtained from trees. Rather than choosing materials only as plant names, he gave them roles expressing the sensations of a moving car.
Pellegrin’s Il Sottobosco takes the undergrowth and ground of a forest after rain as its subjects. He himself walked there on a rainy day. He depicted the smells of wood and earth he experienced through the earthy expressions of patchouli and carrot seed, adding brightness and movement with pink pepper. It is a sensation closer to roots and the forest floor than to the mill’s soft sweetness.
Even in one place, the body receives different impressions when entering a mill, driving a car, or walking in a forest. Rather than reproducing the same scenery uniformly, each Memorie fragrance expresses a different way of encountering a place.
Bottle Design: Landscape Colors and an Ash-Wood Cap
Memorie’s bottles share a common form, distinguishing their stories through gradient colors. Il Lanificio’s amber reflects the changing landscape of Oasi Zegna; A Trivero’s blue expresses air flowing through an open car window; Il Sottobosco’s brown represents earth, wood, and leaves. Color, too, offers a clue to the place toward which each fragrance leads.
The cap is made of ash wood, topped with a silver-colored family crest. The box features a gap motif representing the house’s emblematic Road 232 and a stamp-like illustration of the wool mill. The bottle is designed to be refilled and used over time, preserving the house’s history in its container and packaging as well as its scent.
Incidentally…
Looking closely at the crest on a Memorie cap reveals a crane holding a stone in one foot. This motif represents vigilance and security, and the crest’s motto means “In vigilance lies security.” Even a small emblem that might seem merely decorative contains words passed down through the Zegna family.
References
- Anna Zegna on Her Grandfather Ermenegildo Zegna and the Zegna Man — Vanity Fair, August 3, 2015, remarks by Anna Zegna — https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2015/08/anna-zegna-on-her-grandfather-ermenegildo-zegna-and-the-zegna-man
- History of the Group — Zegna Group official, the textile business and local initiatives — https://www.zegnagroup.com/en/overview/history/
- Memorie: Men’s Fragrances — Zegna official, the collection’s theme and six settings — https://www.zegna.com/jp-ja/memorie-mens-fragrances/
- Memorie, il nuovo guardaroba olfattivo di Zegna — Vogue Italia, March 6, 2026, the perfumers’ accounts of creation — https://www.vogue.it/article/nuovi-profumi-zegna-recensione-fragranze
- 2021 Annual Report — Zegna Group official, founding and business history (pp. 10–11) — https://www.zegnagroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/2021-Annual-Report.pdf
- In ricordo di Ermenegildo Zegna — Fondazione Zegna, November 18, 2016, the founder’s life — https://www.fondazionezegna.org/2016/11/18/in-ricordo-di-ermenegildo-zegna/
- The Panoramica Zegna 80 years on — Fondazione Zegna, August 18, 2018, history of the mountain road — https://www.fondazionezegna.org/en/2018/08/18/the-panoramica-zegna-80-years-on/
- From Sheep to Shop — Fondazione Zegna’s permanent exhibition, expansion into ready-to-wear — https://www.fondazionezegna.org/en/permanent-exhibition/
- Gucci Group N.V. Announces Financial Results for First Quarter 2003 — July 2, 2003, contemporary official record of the launch of Essenza di Zegna — https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1001576/000104746903023359/a2114228z6-k.htm
- Hot Gifts: His and Hers with Ermenegildo Zegna and Oscar de la Renta — Vanity Fair, December 18, 2012, early Essenze materials and compositions — https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2012/12/Hot-Gifts-For-Him-and-Her-with-Oscar-de-la-Renta-and-Ermenegildo-Zegna
- Zegna and Lauder cement partnership with ‘Uomo’ — TRBusiness, November 14, 2012, launch press conference and remarks by those involved in development — https://www.trbusiness.com/regional-news/international/zegna-and-lauder-cement-partnership-with-uomo/67747
- Il Lanificio Eau de Parfum — Zegna official, fragrance composition, bottle, and official product images — https://www.zegna.com/ww-en/fragrances/product.il-lanificio-eau-de-parfum.38085824/
- A Trivero Eau de Parfum — Zegna official, inspiration and fragrance composition — https://www.zegna.com/ww-en/product.a-trivero-eau-de-parfum.38085826/
- Zegna Launches 6 Fragrances as an Olfactory Memoir of Its Founder — Harrods, perfumer comments and creative background for each fragrance — https://www.harrods.com/en-au/c/stories/beauty/zegna-fragrance-collection-launch
- Il Sottobosco Eau de Parfum — Zegna official, inspiration and fragrance composition — https://www.zegna.com/ww-en/fragrances/product.il-sottobosco-eau-de-parfum.38085828/
- Memorie: Fragrance Collection FAQ — Zegna official, bottle colors and meaning of the family crest — https://me.zegna.com/en-sa/memorie-fragrance-faq
