After last season’s world tour, Bottega Veneta’s Matthieu Blazy spoke backstage tonight about the everyday: “It started with watching the news; What can we do in the world we live in?” he asked. “The original idea was to reduce [the collection] to almost the position [of clothes]– just don’t reduce to the minimum, but to a maximum. I wanted to turn the everyday into a monument.”
While these were clothes to wear to the office, or out to dinner, or late at night walking your dog, there was nothing businesslike about them thanks to their unique volume.
It started with the first look of the show, a couture-style black cocoon coat whose round, three-dimensional silhouette was the result of folding in the sides and sleeves, which were secured with large brass buttons. Loosen them and the coat becomes more or less flat. Rounded jeweled buttons were used to a similar effect on elegant color block dresses, where the placement of the closures at one side of the neckline and at the other hip created asymmetrical drapes. You can imagine Blazy and his team in the studio working with muslin and sticking pins on a mannequin or model and approving the improvised, unstudied results they achieve.
The clothes were stripped back: gone were the embroideries and embellishments that defined last season’s collection – “I thought it was better to go real,” said Blazy – but there was no shortage of impressive craftsmanship. Like the two kinds of fringe – short and spiky, and long and fluid – that accentuate the hem of the striking red column (it must be Oscar-bound, said a colleague from New York), or the shredded fil coupé dévoré of a golden yellow long dress that looked like it had been brushed with sandpaper.
Blazy said, “I wanted the technique to be in the fabric itself.” A great example of this were the ‘memory’ prints made from layer-upon-layer passport stamps that he used for a trio of sleek looks with flared layers on their skirts. The show’s subtler “future” prints, which appeared on layered cotton shirts and chunky trench coats, were lifted from loose-leaf and graph paper.
There is now a strong undercurrent of ‘everyday’ clothing in the industry; Amid all the intersecting crises, there is an understandable tendency among designers and their executives to play it safe. As we’ve seen so far this season, that can lead to the same fashion, which is indistinguishable from catwalk to catwalk. Blazy is immune to that risk. Although they are ‘real’, ‘functional’ and ‘pragmatic’, it is a mistake to regard his clothes as modest. A new addition to the industry’s most distinctive accessory offering was a fish-shaped clutch, a cousin to the popular Sardine bag, in a vibrant multi-coloured intrecciato weave.
