Having seen his hometown grow into a fashion hotspot in the 1980s, Pilati gave up his course in environmental design and joined the fashion houseCerruti as an intern. He thus decided to embrace Milan's fashion scene and set out to learn everything there was to know about ready-to-wear apparel materials and production. A velvet manufacturer offered him his first job. A few months later, Pilati was designing that company's entire collection, and presenting it to Europe's leading ready-to-wear names. The fashion house Giorgio Armani hired him as an assistant in its men's ready-to-wear department in 1993. The fashion house Prada employed Pilati to run its fabricresearch and development in 1995. In 1998 Prada promoted him to assistant designer at Miu Miu, working on men's and women's ready-to-wear clothing and reporting directly to Miuccia Prada. In 2000, Pilati joined fashion house Yves Saint Laurent to run its ready-to-wear and accessories design for both men's and women's; in 2004 Pilati succeeded Tom Ford in his role of Creative Director. During his tenure as head designer, Pilati was responsible for creating fashion staples such as the tulip skirt, as well as extremely successful accessories such as the Muse bag, and the YSL Tribute sandal. After eight years Pilati and the Kering Group parted ways and he left YSL in 2012. While at YSL, Pilati re-introduced booking former top Models for YSL’s ad-campaigns and worked with iconic photographers such as Juergen Teller and Inez Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. He also created a democratic form of street advertising publishing limited editionManifesto. In addition to his work at YSL, he created costumes for the production of Harold Pinter's play Betrayal, which opened in June 2011 at the ComedyTheatre in London. In late 2012, Pilati signed on at Ermenegildo Zegna, becoming the head of design at Ermenegildo Zegna and creative director of Agnona, overseeing Zegna's fashion show and the couture collection. Zegna created a new label for him, Ermenegildo Zegna Couture. Pilati held his first Zegna Couture show during the Milan menswear collection in June 2013. In the following years, his catwalk collections were critically lauded but barely produced. In 2015, he left Agnona. By February 2016, he also stepped down from his role at Zegna. In 2017, using his personal Instagram account, Pilati uploaded 17 looks from a new, self-started brand called Random Identities. Since then, Stefano Pilati works as Creative Director of his own brand, based between Berlin and Milan.
