Walking into Bottega Veneta’s show last night, you couldn’t help but smile. Bright, colourful chairs — each one of a kind — lined the poured-resin floor of an otherwise nondescript warehouse. They were the work of 82-year-old Italian designer and architect Gaetano Pesce, who was invited by the fashion house’s creative director, Matthieu Blazy, to provide the backdrop to his sophomore show. But Geatano provided much more than just the chairs and floor. This was a landscape in which the collection could be understood, with an emphasis on mood-lifting, serotonin-boosting swirls of colours, textures and materials. “The world in a small room,” was how Matthiew put it after the show. His collection was therefore centred on an array of characters as unique as each of those chairs, a display of confidence as a designer from someone who has acquired years of experience working for some of the greatest.
“We had a lot of discussions about diversity,” Matthieu reflected after the Afrodeutsche-soundtracked show. He wasn’t talking about that kind of diversity, but rather a full gamut of clothes for every occasion, and all kinds of people. That spectrum spanned people going to work; picking up a coffee and a paper on the weekend; dressing up for dinner, or maybe a cocktail party or wedding. It started off with a roll call of not-so-basic basics: classic striped shirts, straight-leg blue jeans, grey sweaters tied at the neck, white T-shirts, even paper bags that made Kate Moss look like she just picked up an oat milk latte on a Sunday morning. Easy, right? Hardly clothes worthy for a catwalk? Well, the process of making them is anything but.
Crafted entirely from nubuck leather, printed up to 12 times to achieve the right tones and shaved down to feather-light density, those archetypical basics were what he described as having a “perverse banality”. He added that he liked the idea of a stratospherically pricey leather flannel only being known to the wearer — and to anyone else, it’s just a shirt. Albeit a perfect one. Come to think of it, the whole trick-of-the-eye approach couldn’t be more apt for Bottega Veneta, which has always been a house that offers discretion and patrician luxury with the tagline “your own initials are enough.” Stealth wealth, inconspicuous consumption, perverse banality — whatever you want to call it, it’s the ultimate flex for those who can afford it, and far more interesting and less vulgar than buying a Ferrari as inflation soars. For the rest of us, we can feel vindicated by a love letter to items that we may already have in our wardrobes.
Besides, the rest of the collection was so far from basics. Following the all-leather staples, there were some accomplished displays of exuberance gracing the catwalks this season. It’s clear that Matthieu likes contrasts: basic/fabulous; simple/ornate; old/new; and more broadly speaking, past/future. He leans into juxtapositions to create a sense of modernity and eclecticism, leaving the audience feeling as if they’ve just been to a great dinner party. For the extroverts, there were Vernini flowers embellished onto gauzy layers of sheer jersey tank dresses, with crystals dotted like raindrops. A handful of sublime dresses and suits came in bright Futurist patterns, entirely knitted with beaded tassels swinging from the hems — vaguely globe-trotting in their colourful print, and totally couture-like in their ornateness.
Meanwhile, quieter dressers will relish in the Boccioni-silhouetted tailoring, curving as if in motion at the sleeves and neck, and an array of funnel-neck jackets with Volcano-like necklines and subtly exaggerated cuffs for rolling up. And to finish, a heavenly trio of calf-skimming dresses in tomato-red, limoncello and aquamarine — colours to match the Gaetano Pesce furniture — that elicited a symphony of sighs as they swished by. Entirely knitted, with the fringe integrated into the weave, they’re a technical masterpiece that makes you swoon for all the right reasons.
After all, most people don’t get to stand in front of the mirror and contemplate getting dressed with craftsmanship in mind. First and foremost, they want to look good. How it’s made is a big bonus, mainly because it’ll last longer. One of the great things about Matthieu’s approach to Bottega Veneta is that he’s all about craft, but not in the way that other designers will extemporise about the hundreds of hours worked by white-gloved technicians, or make holier-than-thou proclamations about sustainability.
You get the sense that Matthieu relishes in the possibilities of craft in the service of design, that he’s excited about the geeky technical aspects of the process because it is why the end results look and feel incredible. So much of the collection was woven — this is Bottega, after all, the home of the intrecciato! And yet not one item looked conspicuously woven, even though looms probably had to be invented to make them. Instead, we were given brilliantly-designed clothes, with enough variety to appease even polar opposites. Finally, stratospherically high craftsmanship with a totally modern look — what more could you ask for?
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Images via Spotlight