Portraits of Gildo Zegna, Chairman and CEO of Ermenegildo Zegna Group, Milan, Italy. The session took place in January during an Autumn/ Winter Milan Fashion Week Men’s.
This was my first experience of fashion week. Checking my folder I did not cover that much, I have 17 sub folders of backstage, shows, and re-sees which I took in three days; my record is 27. Having left the military less than two years before, if you had told me I would be photographically covering fashion week in Milan, I would have laughed at you. I was stunned at the pace of the days which, even with my service background, were relentlessly full of travelling as fast as possible from show to show and then sitting and waiting for them to start.
Arriving early at the Zegna offices with my editor, we spent a few minutes in different locations trying and testing different locations of the main atrium incorporating the architecture of the building which, as you can tell, was a natural light lover’s dream. In total the session with Gildo lasted 15 minutes starting on the balcony, moving to his office (the portrait with the triptych of large fine art photography prints) and then back to the atrium, this time on the stairs at the far end of the building. Despite the occasion of fashion week and the brand showing later that day Gildo was super calm and accommodating and I have a large selection of poses and compositions from each location; 203 frames in total.
The head to toe portrait is the most heavily edited of the three frames as he was backlit by the windows, so effort has been made to recover detail that would otherwise be overexposed. A close up of Gildo Zegna from this location was used the title’s cover image a month or two later.
