Two cities, one standard
Design lives in our Milano office. Everything else is ours in Laleli, Istanbul: the factory that cuts and sews every piece, the showroom where buyers meet the collection, and the logistics center that ships it worldwide.
The House of Zanardi
A quiet kind of glamour.
Founded in the back streets of Milano in the early years of this century, Zanardi began with a simple discipline: to make clothes that a woman could wear forever, and that the people who watched her wear them would never forget.
The Atelier
Three generations, one room.
Our atelier works in Laleli, Istanbul, in the streets that have dressed half a continent for generations. The cutters' table is a long stretch of polished pearwood that has crossed three generations of the same craft. The youngest member of our team is twenty-six. The oldest is seventy-three. Between them, they have cut more silk than any of us would care to count.
Each silhouette is drawn by hand in our Milano office, fitted twice on the live model, and signed off by the Istanbul cutter who built it. Nothing leaves the atelier without that signature.
The Materials
Sourced like a vintage.
Our silks come from the lake region above Como, where weavers have been working with mulberry threads since the late seventeenth century. Our wools travel down from a small mill in Biella that has only ever sold to ten houses, of which we are honoured to be one. Our leathers are cut in Tuscany, vegetable-tanned in pits that have been in continuous use for more than fifty years.
We do not name our suppliers in marketing. We feel that would be a kind of theft. But we visit each of them at least twice a season, and we sit at their tables, and we listen.
Our Promise
Four things we will never compromise on.
Heritage mills, slow-grown fibres
Silks from Como. Wools from Biella. Leathers from Tuscany. We choose mills the way a sommelier chooses an estate: for the patience in the result.
Two collections a year, never more
Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter, with a small holiday capsule at the close of the year. We will never run a "drop" calendar; we believe a wardrobe deserves to be allowed to breathe.
Care, repair, and a long memory
Every Zanardi piece is repairable, by us, for the lifetime of the garment. Bring it back ten years later and we will still know exactly who cut it.