Z Zegna Spring 2010 Men´s.

The elongated jacket with its severely suppressed waist, the pinstriped trousers, the two-tone buttoned boot…the top hat! Why, it was almost as if Alfred, Lord Douglas—Oscar Wilde's bad and beautiful Bosie—was walking the world again.

Alessandro Sartori wanted the echo of the past to be that strong, but only so he could subvert it and drag it into the future. His latest collection for Z Zegna imagined an Edwardian dandy in a concrete and steel underworld. It was a daring proposition, because it constantly teetered just this side of costume.

But the tailcoats were raw-edged, the prints were lifted straight off the graffiti on Milanese walls, and jackets were doubled ("giacca doppia") so there was no shirt needed. Hardly the stuff of a gentleman's wardrobe.

Zegna has unparalleled fabric research facilities, so Sartori was able to perform alchemy with, for instance, black leather, which was splintered into a jacket of perforated petals.

The lustrous mauve of a huge coat spoke untold volumes about dyeing processes. But other flourishes, like the long scarves created from jacket lapels, were the designer's alone (with a nod to Neil Barrett's forensic dissection of sartorial elements last season).

Even the simplest outfits—say, double-pleated dove-gray leather pants paired with a sheer stock tie shirt—were enough of a challenge to make one wonder where the client would be for such outré elegance.

But there was a bravery in Sartori's implicit conviction that elegance would win the day—in a world where there is precious little.

Thiago Santos (Bananas)

Thiago Santos (Bananas)