Alessandro Sartori considers himself “one of the luckiest designers in the world.”

At the WWD Apparel and Retail CEO Summit in conversation with WWD style director Alex Badia, the artistic director of Zegna attributed this not only to the opportunity he was given working with the Italian menswear company, but also because of the bountiful resources at his disposal.

Sartori compared his studio to a restaurant that has in its own backyard the vegetables, fruits and grocery needed for the best recipes. “I open the door and all the ingredients are there, produced internally, and this gives me the fantastic possibility to work starting from the raw materials, as we design the yarns, the fibers, the fabrics and, of course, the collections.”

The recipient of the WWD Menswear Designer of the Year award, Sartori was acknowledged for leading the major stylistic shift and commercial success of the Zegna brand.

The connection with Zegna runs deep. Sartori began his career at the Italian group in 1989 as a menswear designer and became creative director of the Z Zegna line in 2003. In 2011, he was appointed artistic director at Berluti in Paris and left five years later to rejoin Zegna in his current role.

Asked about those days in the French capital, Sartori admitted the city can be “very intimidating,“ but that he would “suggest, if possible, to any designer to spend” a few years there, where “fashion is different, more related to…