LIMITED EDITION: Gildo Zegna, chief executive officer of the Ermenegildo Zegna Group, and Harald Wester, ceo of Maserati, hosted a party in Milan on Thursday to celebrate the launch of “One of 100,” a book illustrating the hand-made quality of the Maserati Quattroporte Zegna Limited Edition vehicle.
The book is named as such because there were only 100 models of the sedan available for sale since last June. All of the cars, priced starting at $175,000, have since been sold, Wester said.
For the literary project, Zegna and Maserati commissioned Italian photographer Fabrizio Ferri to take pictures of the hands of 100 prominent people — 25 in each of four cities: Shanghai, Dubai, New York and Milan – to commemorate the car.
“I have never done a project like this before,” said Ferri at Zegna’s Milan headquarters prior to the festivities. “This project made me realize how much work goes into making a car.”
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Ferri noted that by focusing on hands, he was able to capture the ethos of hand craftsmanship that is behind making both Maserati’s luxury cars and Zegna’s apparel.
Aside from hands, Ferri also took images of Zegna’s finished wool materials and components of the Maserati car.
Mostly in black-and-white, the pictures were displayed throughout the ground floor of Zegna’s Milan headquarters and were on show only for Thursday night’s festivities.
Also being exhibited was the car itself, which features a special “platinum silk” finish for the body and wheels. The interior is outfitted with custom mocha and gray herringbone silk fabric, which was produced at Zegna’s woolen mills in Trivero, Italy. Customized elements were prominent throughout the car: There’s a label on the back of the visor that reads “Ermenegildo Zegna Exclusively for Maserati.” And a brass plate is fastened on to the central console that reads “Limited Edition One of 100.”
Wester said about 30 percent of the Maserati Quattroporte Zegnas were sold to North America clients, 30 percent to those in the Asia-Pacific region and the remaining 40 percent to customers in the Middle East and Europe.
It isn’t the first time the two companies have mixed fashion and cars. Zegna worked on a project in the past with Ferrari, while Maserati made the Special Edition Maserati GranCabrio Fendi in 2011.
The Zegna-Maserati union was a celebratory one. Maserati feted its centennial in 2014, four years after Zegna reached the same milestone.
“What better way to celebrate than to shine a light on Italian know-how?” Zegna said.