In her third collection for the house, Trotter kept leather and intrecciato at the center and took the weight out of both, in the first Bottega show since Romain Spitzer became chief executive officer
MILAN — Louise Trotter’s third Bottega Veneta collection took the weight out of the house’s heaviest signatures. Leather was shaved thinner, intrecciato was opened into loose-woven bases and crochet, and outerwear lost most of its armor.
The show, staged Saturday night at Fabbrica Orobia, was the first Bottega runway since Romain Spitzer started as chief executive officer on Sept. 1. Kendall Jenner closed in a black draped dress with crochet flats and a leather clutch. Jacob Elordi sat front row alongside Tyler, the Creator, Solange and Julianne Moore.
The Collection’s Central Idea
Trotter said she wanted leathers “as light as I could get them,” and the outerwear delivered. A black trench came with deconstructed sleeves and shoulders that freed the arms. A black peacoat had its collar break into a wrap on one shoulder. Both were familiar coats with the rigidity taken out, which is a narrower ambition than reinventing the coat and a more convincing one.
The show notes framed the season as a proposition “to wear less, but feel more.” The clothes stayed close to that line.
Silhouette and Styling
The lineup lightened as it went, from coats and tailoring to gauzy skirts and openwork knits: a macramé-style tank over a lightly pleated maxi skirt, a lace collar on tan leather trousers, a pearl-colored shirt that ran into a scarf at the neck.
Fringe did the most visual work. It was draped shoulder to shoulder like a scarf, gathered into bubble hems on floral-printed skirts and hung from an oversize straw bag nearly to the floor. Three-dimensional flowers, in black and white, bounced off a layered slip dress.
Color arrived late and in small doses: a violet blazer over pink satin trousers with a purple intrecciato cap, red and burgundy leather coats and dresses. Hats were everywhere, in crochet, cotton bucket and oversize straw, a carryover from the beanies of the fall show.
The House Codes
Intrecciato moved from the handbag to the wardrobe. It showed up as tight-woven bibs on tuxedo shirts, loose-woven bases under blouses, and on a men’s trench and women’s high boots. The lace and crochet drew on Venice’s knitting and stitching traditions.
“We’re a house of craft,” Trotter told reporters after the show. The point of the season was that craft could be subtracted as well as stacked: the weave was the same, the density was not.
The bags followed the same logic. East-west clutches, pouches, a beige lizard clutch and raffia-and-leather totes, which were sized up this season, all sat on the light side of the house’s usual weight.
What Worked
The reworked outerwear made the argument most cleanly, because the coats were the pieces where weight had been Bottega’s problem before. The open-weave blouses and the woven-bib tuxedo shirts came next, treating intrecciato as a fabric rather than a bag technique. The accessories were the most commercially legible part of the show; none needed explaining.
Where It Faltered
Volume was less controlled. A few models were swamped by scooped-neck sack dresses and satin peacoats, where ease tipped into formlessness. The weathered neutral palette that anchored much of the lineup also dulled some of the technical ideas underneath it, and the fringe and lace looks read louder than the leathers they were meant to lighten.
Spring-summer deliveries reach stores while winter coats are still on the floor, which makes weight a commercial question as much as an aesthetic one. Milan temperatures hovered near 30 degrees Celsius the week of the show.
Spitzer, the former head of LVMH’s fragrance group, succeeded Bartolomeo Rongone, who left March 31 to become Moncler’s group CEO. He reports to Kering CEO Luca de Meo, who has laid out plans to double the brand’s business outside leather goods. Lighter coats, open-weave shirts, and a bigger bag range all support that target.
Trotter has now shown three collections at Bottega. On the runway, the subtraction was the craft.
See the complete collection below:
Images courtesy of Bottega
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