The 65th Pitti Immagine Filati will be staged in Florence from the 7th to the 9th of July and at the show, Zegna Baruffa Lane Borgosesia is presenting its new Autumn/Winter 2010-11 Collection of top-quality yarns for knitwear - Baruffa and B-Exclusive.

Winter 2010-11 from Zegna Baruffa Lane Borgosesia is dedicated to superior luxury

Today there are many definitions of luxury. The look of exclusivity, uniqueness and hand-crafted tradition can be emphasised. Or else ethereal elements can be played upon such as the emotional and intrinsic value of the product, its capacity to evoke a dream.

For Zegna Baruffa Lane Borgosesia luxury is product excellence guaranteed by an ever-important handmade component, and a technique of exceptional craftsmanship which characterises all the phases of factory production.

To produce quality today is to create objects that marry the ‘savoir faire’ of the best handcrafted tradition with the manifest possibilities of the most advanced technology, in a virtuous round of experimentation and research on yarns of great intrinsic value.

If the motto ‘quality is always in fashion’ has always been the foundation of Zegna Baruffa Lane Borgosesia production, machinery of the highest specification, with constant investment by the Company over the years, are now used to ennoble the already distinguished fibre. And it is thus that this first-class material, one of the rarest in the world, has managed to touch the apex of creativity and performance.

The four declinations of luxury

Luxury is ‘vintage cult’

In the search for the luxury and quality of times past, the fascination with vintage is how it stirs the memory, and it is now representative of an all-embracing cultural phenomenon. In the world of fashion, vintage defines quality, and the validity of creating a second-hand object anew.

Sablé-effect contrast and surprise 

Sablé has a hazy, old-seeming, very sophisticated colour effect, an exquisite dusting that gives an item a refined appearance. Vintage took on a secret role as custodian of memory in the fashion world, to drive the most important maisons to test the implementation of the second-hand imitation effect.

Now the Sablé theme is unleashing new interpretations of Vintage, truly emphasising the beautiful and hand-crafted looks which render an ‘antique’ item extremely contemporary, and which offers fashion designers a material that has been created just to achieve this effect.

In fact, Zegna Baruffa Lane Borgosesia has achieved an exquisite blend that unites top-quality excellence of material – silk - to a really special dye. The result is a yarn that gives stitching a real retro feel, the look of a “recycled” fashion item. Thus the protagonist is silk with its lustre and its irresistible handmade look, a little blurry during dyeing. The Sablé yarns are an extraordinary example of how a first-class material of remarkable quality, and cutting-edge technology, can come together in the attainment of a yarn inspired by timeless luxury. 

Luxury is evergreen

Superfine wools

Super extra-fine wools give life to very prestigious and perfect yarns, soft and smooth, created only with natural, precious fibres. The choice of exceptional and rare first-class materials through the use of a rigorous selection process, allows for the attainment of incomparable results, the look of the yarn and the fineness of the wool item. 

They contain ‘all season’ yarns, ideal passe-par-tout that exceeds the concept of seasonality.

The microns are excellent worked until arriving at a Limited Edition 13.75 micron (beyond the Cashmere fineness).

 Cashwool has returned to the product range – the Zegna Baruffa registered trademark, known as the cornerstone of international yarn – with a stock service in various metric count numbers and 340 colours from solid, melanges, super-melange, mouliné and superwash – suitable for total easy care.

Cashwool is entirely produced in the historic factory of Borgosesia, side-by-side with the new Super 170’S (15 micron), Sixteen 140’S (16.5 micron) and Millennium 120’S (17.5 micron).

The purest cashmere

In the B-Exclusive line we find cashmere of the finest counts: all the richness and exquisiteness of this noble and sought-after first-class material to be transformed into exceptional yarns.

Brilliance, sweet to touch, satiny-like surface, exquisiteness and practicality are the tools of these luxurious and complex blends, combining elegance and comfort for items of everyday use with an impeccable and sophisticated look. 

Luxury is eco-sustainable

The future of the planet is a universally-shared preoccupation.

For Zegna Baruffa Lane Borgosesia, sensitivity to environmental themes underlines all experimentation on natural materials using continually-advancing technology. The result revives some of the successful yarns in a new key. 

Organic wool: Ecowool

Certified organic wool is ‘tech-friendly’: because it is soft and beautiful and because it’s intrinsic properties render it a performance fibre without the need for any chemical treatment.

Tech-friendly wool is eco-compatible at all stages of manufacture:  breeding techniques consider environmental preservation and respect for the biological cycle. The transformation phase for attaining the yarn is achieved with biological and bio-degradable systems, and without the use of chlorine. The dyeing takes place with respect for the Oeko-Tex standard. The “finishing” is undertaken with natural products, for example aloe. Ecowool is: organic certified by IMO CH N° 28781

 Natural fur yarns

These are voluminous structures which imitate real fur; are realized in bouclé or curling effect with jaspé and melange colours and knitted in special patterns to enhance the yarn’s hair.

They are softened out ‘tone-on-tone’ on variants of natural hues, creating vanish soften blends in colour.

The titles are thick and really thick, with the natural feel of fur.

Technical luxury 

The colour of Supermelange technology  

Supermelange is the technology used by Zegna Baruffa to achieve the perfect colour blend. Supermelange is fusion of colour, richness and depth of tones. It is translated in gradations that would be impossible to attain with traditional techniques. A new way to conceive colour and it is the richest, and the top-dye way most expensive and perfect to achieve it.

Felted and fancy

A theme of the rich fan of interpretations as ‘Y-er’ shows, a sweet, evanescent, brushed yarn. Or the Shetland-soft ‘Esk’, a blended colouring, rustic and solid. Then there is ‘Mousse’, a wispy yarn, a ‘cloud of wool’, dense but light. These are products created to achieve the ‘felted woollen effect’ through the processes of brushing and fulling.

When brushing the yarn the product becomes fluffier and softer. The knitted garment changes its touch, and has a velvety look. The wool item gets hotter because the process expands the air held between the wool fibres; consequently it accentuates their properties of thermal isolation.

Fulling gives volume to the yarn, and is an ancient art, which was practised by the Romans in workshops called fullonicae. The knitted pieces of wool were dipped in big tubs of water and clay, beaten with the feet, rubbed and wrung out by hand by the workers. Today there are industrial machines to carry out this process, but ‘fulling’ continues to change the whole initial look of the product.

 Air-spun - weight-less volume

Air-Spun is the technology studied by endowing the yarn with extreme lightness and softness.  The basis of Air-spun technology is the desire to invent products that create the illusion of weight: soft, fluffy, voluminous to look at, but when touched they are very light.

These weightless fancy yarns swollen with air transform themselves into extraordinarily comfortable knitwear items. And they combine the most rigorous technique with the desire for naturalness.