“In a few words, the initial talk I had with the team was what would’ve been the ready-to-wear of Bottega when they started to make the bags in the late ’60s and ’70s. Of course, the idea was almost to work on something anachronic—we don’t want to go too literal, it was the idea of a modern time traveler.”
Matthieu Blazy’s fall Bottega Veneta show was among the most talked about of the season, admired not just for its transportive set, with its Murano glass cactus sculptures and Le Corbusier stools made from scorched wood—he was moved by our turbulent times to conjure a resilient landscape—but also for the way it elevated essential clothes like the cocooning peacoat in the first look, “making a monument of the everyday,” as he eloquently put it.
This pre-fall lineup was developed before the show collection, but it came from the same instincts for the purposeful and utilitarian. The late ’60s and ’70s witnessed the birth of the women’s liberation movement and the democratization of fashion—they’re not unrelated subjects. Blazy, has given the season’s practical items a Bottega Veneta polish, but he made a point of saying, “I wanted to have things a little bit easier, softer; more everyday, less statements.”
The development process involved lots of photo research, including in old Interview magazines— “Andy Warhol loved Bottega,” he explained—to see “how people layered and mixed and matched.” It led to results like the suede skirt layered over suede pants in the photo you see here, and the trim crewneck and striped collar shirt tucked belted gray jeans. The spirit he was channeling was “bourgeois, but decontracté,” he suggested, pointing to a checked button-down (actual cotton, not leather, as he’s done in the past) worn with a leather bomber and a khaki twill pencil skirt, and another checked button-down (this one in nubuck, not cotton) with a full skirt. On the handbag front, he pursued a similar goal, pushing styles that don’t necessarily foreground the famous woven leather strips. A red leather bandana bag is especially cool.
There is much more to pore over in this lookbook: the Miami pastel pant suits, the colorful suede intrecciato separates, including a repeat of that skirt-over-pants silhouette, the turquoise and red leopard print pants and matching pumps, and a vibrant horizontally striped knit dress with the nubby pile of a carpet. Blazy just can’t help himself: They’re statement-making, every single one.