It’s Milan Fashion Week, and obviously, all Italian fashion powerhouses are present, including Bottega Veneta. The Milanese fashion house presented its A/W 2022 Collection yesterday, the very first effort of the brand’s new creative director, Paris-born Matthieu Blazy (1984). So, there’s a return to a fundamental questioning of the brand—a building on the past to realise the present and evoke the future. A story of clothing and character is explored by maker and wearer, an exchange that involves a sense of motion and emotion. Eschewing disposability and away from pure spectacle, it ultimately results in the more private pleasure of ‘quiet power,’ something felt, rather than seen. Extravagance meets utility, there’s a permeation of the everyday with poignant materials and techniques, things that could only be realised through the traditional craft of the artisans in the Italian ateliers. Yes, normcore has also infiltrated this luxury fashion house, but given Bottega Veneta‘s highly sophisticated creative legacy, the execution obviously is top-notch.
All is lightly worn by a cinematographic cast of characters who bring a sense of subversion to tradition, but also to movement, sensuality and life—from the Italian bombshell in her everyday, photo-real denim with her Kalimero bag slung over her shoulder, each bag a feat of artisanal craft, the uniquely hand woven leather intreccio is one piece, to girls in their lover’s business shirts and their intreccio thigh high boots, then on to men and women in supposedly stripped down suiting, revealing in profile a more radical, recurring silhouette, the inspiration being Umberto Boccioni’s sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, making the Italian Futurist past into the ever present through volumes realised in pattern cutting. Rigorous fabrications, all freshly and exclusively formulated for ultra-lightness, fullness, movement and texture, can be found throughout the collection for both men and women; from new wool flannels, and colour-flecked herringbones, through to thrice printed textural pieces built around the body, to new interpretations of Leavers lace, still accomplished on eighteenth century looms, layered with 21st century synthetic jersey. Knitwear is purposely idiosyncratic, reminiscent of cherished childhood pieces in their uniqueness. At times this cast of characters clutch leather Pillow bags.
Publishers Note
Just to be clear – superfuture® is a design blog and not a political commentator. No surprise there. The scope of our content has always been global and borderless, however that can often mean covering projects in countries where we will not agree with the politics or actions of those countries. In a world that’s as screwed up as ever right now, the focus of our support is to those designers, architects and other creatives who aim to make the world a more liveable one – as opposed to people that try their hardest to destroy it. So if a project hits our desk and we like it based on its design credentials, we may choose to publish regardless of its location or creators nationality. superfuture® has always been inclusive and hopes for all current wars, aggression, violence, hate and extremism to end.
