MFW: BOTTEGA VENETA Fall Winter 2022.23 Collection

Designer Matthieu Blazy presented his first collection for BOTTEGA VENETA with a fashion show, on February 26th, during the ongoing Milan Fashion Week. The collection explores relationship between maker and wearer, and brings a sense of motion and emotion. It fuses extravagance and utility – everyday wear meets the traditional craft of the artisans in the Italian ateliers. For the season, Bottega Veneta introduces a cinematographic cast of characters from the Italian bombshell in her everyday photo-real denim, to the girls in their lover’s business shirts. Looks are playful and light.

Bottega Veneta is in essence pragmatic because it is a leather goods company. 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. – Matthieu Blazy

“Rigorous fabrications, all freshly and exclusively formulated for ultra-lightness, fullness, movement and texture, are found throughout 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 twenty first 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. Even intreccio boxes, more familiar from homeware, might be clasped. Here, the question isn’t ‘why?’ But, ‘why not?’ An individual’s gestures matter; it’s ultimately the wearer’s decision how to move and live in this clothing, of how they will tell their own tales through these pieces, that is ultimately respected and encouraged by the maker. And it is perhaps this that defines what Bottega Veneta truly stands for: an emotional investment in objects for life – in both senses of the term.” – from Bottega Veneta