It’s a voluminous time for clothes. Dresses and skirts are enormous, not to mention often static, engineered for the paparazzi’s lens or Instagram’s bright doomscroll of squares. Colors are loud and expressive. In a period obsessed with identity, clothing has become the lingua franca; articulating what you want and believe, for celebrities and hoi polloi alike, often begins with the clothes you put on your back.
In these times, is any designer confident enough in their vision not to shout it? That’s what made the debut collection of Matthieu Blazy, the recently installed designer at Bottega Veneta, so enticing. As he put it in an email to me, “I think luxury is something you feel rather than see; it is much more personal and emotive for the person wearing the clothing than the ones looking at them.”
Bottega Veneta.
Let’s take a step back for a moment to recount some recent Bottega history. Up until a few months ago, it was Daniel Lee, the redheaded millennial Brit who cut his teeth at Phoebe Philo’s Celine, who was leading this crown jewel of “stealth luxury” into an unexpectedly hyped place. He made jumbo bags and enormous rain galoshes into Instagram and streetstyle bait, and an act of sort of genius claimed ownership of a screaming green color called “parakeet,” transforming a brand known for its logo-less woven intrecciato bags and understated clothes into an influencer uniform. Then Lee departed suddenly last October, under mysterious circumstances, and Blazy, who had been Lee’s design director, was quickly elevated to the top role. He may not be a household name, but Blazy is an industry vet: he cut his teeth at Maison Margiela, is a protegee of Raf Simons, and is the partner of Alaia designer Pieter Mulier. And he is tasked with ensuring the house does not stray too far from either its edgy rebrand (which was really clicking with consumers) nor its original reputation for undisputed luxury. He could have pulled off a radical reboot, or he could have simply showed a steady hand evolving Lee’s vision. What he did felt like the latter, but offered something more: he created a collection that was fantastically self-assured and confident, a feeling that transmitted into the very movement of the clothes.
“Quiet power is not just for the viewer, rather it is for the wearer,” he said by email. “I want the wearer to be empowered without the clothing being loud.”
Bottega Veneta.
Bottega Veneta.
Blazy is no radical, but moving his emphasis away from “the viewer” to “the wearer” has titillating potential. Instagram, as I said, totally transformed the way we consume fashion, making it less about you than who’s looking at you (and double-tapping about it). But it also changed the way that designers make clothes, giving us a maximalist, attention-grabbing sensibility that further moved the focus away from the wearer. The alternative to that was just as public-facing: the minimalist Philophile school that longs for that designer’s tenure at Celine, seems to have worn down the edges of Philo’s wacky, surrealist concepts into something sleepily tasteful, the perfect compliment to a manicured hand over a worn copy of a Joan Didion book and a coffee cup by a hip ceramicist. Most designers and fashion observers don’t seem to envision a departure from either of those modes. But fashion is now evolving to a world dominated by video, whether through TikTok or livestreamed fashion shows. Clothing can no longer sit still. So far, the industry has anticipated that change by focusing on concepts like the metaverse, which is basically a virtual reality in which consumers will focus on outlandish digital costumes rather than real-world clothes.
Bottega Veneta.
OK, great, so how did these clothes show us the promise of something else? They were visibly designed, as opposed to just vibes–not a lapel or pant length wasn’t considered, as in a black sleeveless cocktail sheath with subtly bulbous straps and an almost-gratuitous slit up the front. It had a sense of humor, which womenswear, understandably, has been hesitant to take on: look at the way those Koosh ball-esque pompoms boinged on the shoulders of a leather shift dress and a cacao-red leather jumpsuit. It was kind of wacko and super creative with even the simple stuff, like the fact that the almost non-look that opened the show, a tank top and a pair of baggy jeans, was actually leather. (This is the sort of Margiela-ish material trick that has become popular over the past few years–Balenciaga, for example, does a pair of screen printed viscose jeans that wobble like a deep fake. Blazy used a similar idea to more human, or less dystopian effect.) Nothing was over-styled: when there were furry orange wedges, they were shown with a simple double-breasted black suit, neat and efficient as a pinprick. The mood was so right for these times–which is the simplest but most beguiling task for a designer–that just the crisp rounded back of a blue wool jacket seems to be going semi-viral in the Instagram stories of the fashion cognoscenti. Clearly, we needed this.
Bottega Veneta.
Bottega Veneta.
The most winning look of all was a skirt and sweater, of all things: a nutty oatmeal pullover with a cubist neckline worn over a big swinging clay-purple leather skirt with skinny bouncing fringe underneath. It’s an idea that makes a woman in motion look fantastic, which is a show of optimism (and smart for our video-forward age). That fringey look, which also appeared under long leather dresses, is bouncy and lovely and a bit weird without making you look like a meme. As silly and simple as it sounds, I’ve been wondering lately where all the beauty is. Don’t women, especially when we are spending a lot of money, and especially when so much of the world is so degrading, want to feel beautiful? It’s so humanizing to feel elegant.
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