SETTING THE STAGE
As creative director Tomas Maier departs Bottega Veneta, the house is poised for a new era.
After the lights went down and the partygoers went home at the American Stock Exchange Building after the autumn/winter ’18/’19 Bottega Veneta collection, the usual meditations on the show began. A lot centred on the venue, an imposing Art Deco temple of capitalism with 20-metre-high ceilings that until 2008 housed one of the world’s largest trading floors (we were in New York, not Milan, after all), but Tomas Maier stressed those were off the mark.
“It had nothing to do with the stock market and money, because it is not even the stock market anymore,” the creative director elucidated the next day seated on a quiet upper floor of the house’s new five-storey 1,395-square-metre Madison Avenue maison, the first reason the brand had decamped to Manhattan for the season. “It was a choice only for the space, because I needed a space with no columns, I needed a space that had very high, high ceilings in order to raise walls.”
Of course. Architecturally literate and oriented, nearing obsession, to details, German-born, Paris-trained Maier has spent 17 years stewarding a label rooted in unobtrusive luxury. The announcement of his departure in June then, came as big news in the fashion world, given the snap time frames that pervade today, and casts the label’s course anew after nearly two decades moored to one vision. Some only know Bottega Veneta under his hand, the same that cycled in full ready-to-wear shows for the first time in 2005, and so Maier has set the stage, but what does it look like?
Like everything Bottega Veneta has done under Maier, all is not what it seems. “Someone was in here earlier and said: ‘I loved the fur coat at the end.’ I mean, we don’t do fur,” he says with a hint of slyness, alluding to the label’s commitment to ethical sourcing; parent label Kering has committed to sustainable practice, with Bottega Veneta HQ housed in an eco-friendly building, while the label’s tent pole Cabat bag has been 100 per cent traceable since 2014. “That was velvet bonded together with felted jersey and I made it very crumply so it looked like fur, but it wasn’t.”
Maier has spent time weaving a story of the clothes and accessories, many hand-wrought in Italy like the signature intrecciato technique that creates the recognisable interlocking gauze of leather, but always championing innovation to keep momentum. Like patterns on a series of day dresses and languid silk dresses in shades of warm gold, merlot and a muted plum that followed those on the autumn/winter runway.
“You saw it looked like print, but it was not. It was fabric layered on top of each other, embroidered and then cut away by hand,” he says, pointing out the shapes dotted down the front of an indigo wool dress worn by Kaia Gerber, which were cut-outs laid one upon the other trimmed with fine embroidery, reminiscent of elevator doors from the 1950s or the surreal warping geometry of Tiffany lamps typically found in New York. Another topstitch on a double-breasted poppy blazer was actually a glinting micro chain framing pockets and lapels. The
trompe l’oeil effect of all these he terms embellishing the Bottega Veneta way and is his considered approach to pulling in visual touchpoints of his inspiration – this time the interiors and architecture of the city.
Here he verbally draws an unintended parallel between New York skyscrapers that lunge upwards into space above the streets, usually passed by, until you look up at the cubes and chevrons of Art Deco icons like the Chrysler Building and the shapes that dance off their stone and metal bases. “If it’s not so different in shape or colour, you don’t look at it. But I think once you start really thinking, there’s a lot there.”
It is unexpected details and restrained reveals that have been his lasting mark on the brand. Luxury, Maier’s thinking goes, unfolds on a personal level – the feel as you slip on a jacket, visual trickery you only detect in person. “I sell you a product that takes a lot of time to make and there’s a lot of thoughtfulness that goes into it,” he says. “It’s something that you’re supposed to keep for a long time and I think that’s why every piece you buy here has to be very special … there’s no reason to buy it otherwise.”
With fashion in this moment hankering after the ostentatious, stealth luxury is banking on the appeal of provenance and authenticity, and hoping it will win the allegiance of younger customers. “Luxury brands need to speak to young people and young people are seeking transparency of production as a backlash to fast fashion,” discerns Maier. “People want an emotional connection to what they wear, and season after season as we evolve into the future, our story remains deeply tied to our authentic Italian roots.” To that effect silk used in spring/summer ’18 was from Taroni, a traditional Como mill, and fragrances are bottled in Murano glass.
Developing different products is another approach, like a wallet on a chain that is purposely smaller and so less expensive but not, as Maier iterates, a “dumbed-down piece”. Since September of last year collections have been presented as co-ed, and delivered into store in staggered drops so they come in during the season they’re actually needed. The house is also engaging with personalisation, with stations in stores to have initials branded on bags as well as the push for destination maisons.
The New York store houses an ‘apartment’ on the top floor with furniture, glassware and tableware set out in living and dining rooms. “If we think back how we used to shop, it was exciting to go to Italy, because you would shop in stores that were nowhere else in the world and then you really need to shop because it didn’t exist back home,” Maier explains. “If we go to the idea of a destination … maybe it’s better to have less, but more special. Product that is made for the location.”
The lasting impression one will have of Maier now, taken from this collection, will be a loosening up of house codes that were made to celebrate individuality; the tailored work pieces were bookended by silken pyjama sets and robe dresses with overcoats that opened and closed the show – “the idea of a New York woman putting her coat on over her pyjamas to rush out to walk the dog”, as Maier puts it.
The collection ever so slightly turned the tide on that signature quiet luxury and lays clear a path of possibility that will now be walked by Maier’s newly appointed successor, the young relatively unknown British designer Daniel Lee. Celebrating 50 years in 2016, and another maison slated for Ginza, Tokyo this year, the challenge is now how to tease out the tropes of a legacy brand continually into something competitive.
Back on Madison Avenue, Maier portentously reflected on his legacy. “I’m really, really happy about what we’ve accomplished. I think we’ve come a really long way and I think there are things we can really be proud of: the way we treat people and what the company stands for and how we push forward. What we’ve created, I mean, it’s pretty good,” he says. Then even more pointedly: “We welcome change.”
As the show played out it was clear why he needed an open room without columns. To house a scene within a scene: an open lounge room, with no barriers to bringing the audience onto the stage post-show to share a smoked negroni with closing model Gigi Hadid and Maier himself. A phalanx of young attendees draped themselves on Gio Ponti and Bottega Veneta furniture. “We’ve never done it,” Maier reflected. “It felt very natural, too. Everybody mingled and the music and drinks came out.” A reason to celebrate, a farewell and, seemingly, a legacy with legs.