This weekend in Milan, Daniel Lee’s successor presented his debut collection for Bottega Veneta.
It’s not every day a big-name designer leaves a major fashion house while sales are strong and reviews are still favourable, yet that’s precisely what occurred late in 2021 when British designer Daniel Lee left Bottega Veneta in an expensively scented fog of secrecy.
Matthieu Blazy, Lee’s RTW design director (who worked at Calvin Klein, Celine, Balenciaga, and Raf Simons before joining Bottega), was soon promoted to the top post, and this weekend in Milan, he presented his first collection since Lee’s final one.
Blazy certainly had an unenviable task on his hands, and the expectations were high. Lee was credited with ‘reinventing’ Bottega, transforming it from a low-key brand to one of the most talked-about in the industry, whether for its bags, boots, or the now-iconic “Bottega Green,” the distinctive colour he adopted across his collections.
Bottega’s ‘new’ vision was debuted in one of Milan Fashion Week’s most highly-anticipated shows, opening with a white tank top and a pair of jeans, the first outfit from the Italian label’s Autumn-Winter 2022 collection. The look appeared to be basic at first glance, but closer inspection revealed the trousers to be made of leather — specifically, a printed, supple nubuck designed to look like denim. It radiated quality and craftsmanship, as well as a sense of surprise. It was a perfect preamble for Matthieu Blazy’s debut as the label’s new creative director.
Blazy’s line proved to be a wide-ranging collection of sophisticated, refined garments that echoed some of the most classic silhouettes from the label’s heritage, without straying too far from Lee’s tried-and-true style.
In addition to the “denim” designs, there were huge boyfriend shirts and crombie coats, fringe-filled circle dresses and big mid-century skirts, as well as stripped-down tailoring for both men and women. Many of these were made of leather, paying respect to Bottega Veneta’s roots as a leather goods company.
Leatherwork was also seen in the collection’s accessories. Thigh-high boots, belts, and a range of bags, including a new type, the Kalimero, worn slung over the shoulder, featured Bottega’s iconic intrecciato, the leather weave that has become the house trademark technique.
The transition away from green was perhaps the most noticeable deviation from previous seasons’ Bottega. The colour wasn’t totally gone; it appeared on a couple of pairs of boots and a dress, but it was significantly reduced. Navy, brown, and red and a more subdued palette of yellow, white, and lavender were its replacements. Blazy made a wise decision, and it was maybe the simplest way for him to begin crafting his own path at the company without departing too much from its previous history.
“Bottega Veneta is in essence pragmatic because it is a leather goods company,” said Blazy in the show notes. “Because it specialises in bags it is about movement, of going somewhere; there is fundamentally an idea of craft in motion. It is style over fashion in its timelessness. That is part of its quiet power.”
From Saturday’s show it seems like the luxury brand is still in very good hands.