No materials higher represents the present second in males’s trend than leather-based. Hastily, plainly everybody has a sick leather-based jacket, or a pair of badass leather-based pants—and never the sort that reads kinky, prefer it belongs in a techno membership in Berlin. As a substitute, the leather-based clothes which are taking up are extra romantic, with deep patinas and dramatic shapes—a end result, maybe, of our urge to decorate with power and character in our new post-pandemic-restriction period of togetherness. (For everybody who’s not on the stealth wealth kick, that’s.) What piece of clothes has extra essential character power than a giant leather-based jacket?
It’s in all probability not a coincidence that this pattern aligns with the rise of Matthieu Blazy at Bottega Veneta. Since taking up from Daniel Lee in late 2021, Blazy has turned leather-based clothes into an artwork kind, utilizing the fabric to create a few of the most expressive and simply plain fascinating clothes in trend, like merlot-hued leather-based trench coats that transfer virtually like gabardine, or these trompe l’oeil leather-based denims that superstar match gods like ASAP Rocky and Omar Apollo can’t appear to get sufficient of. The denims, which appear to be well-worn dad denims however that are actually printed leather-based, struck me as notably genius after they opened Blazy’s first assortment, a pondering man’s strategy to casualwear. They’re additionally form of humorous, one thing trend wants extra of. It’s enjoyable to play Blazy’s model of Is it cake? when taking a look at his garments: Is it leather-based?
Blazy answered that query many times on the Bottega Veneta Fall-Winter 2023 present, held on a humid Saturday night time in Milan. A pinstripe nightshirt? Leather-based. A grey flannel overshirt? Additionally leather-based. A pair of socks? That’s proper: knit leather-based footwear. A evenly padded inky scarf collar overcoat, and a structured croc-effect gown coat? Nicely, these had been simpler to identify, however no much less spectacular.
Based on Kering’s annual report, Blazy’s funky, brainy strategy to luxurious is working. The Milanese home had document gross sales in 2022, with income up 16% year-over-year.
Amidst the backstage crush of admirers after the present, a pride-flushed Blazy spoke in regards to the significance of method to his imaginative and prescient for Bottega. “We speak lots about craft, and [this season] we needed to make it a bit much less dusty, proceed to, not clear it, however enhance it. So the thought was to go modern,” he stated. One such innovation was to shave leather-based with a purpose to make clothes lighter, and presumably obtain a extra fluid and fabric-like drape.
Leather-based is not at all new territory for Bottega Veneta; the model’s calling card, well-known from its billionaire-beloved baggage, is its “intrecciato” leather-based braiding. However Blazy pushed even that old-world craft into loopy new territory. Two fashions held three-foot-wide cigar-like baggage that regarded like they might have emerged from the studio of Italian futurist Umberto Boccioni, whose bronze statue “Distinctive Types of Continuity in Area” had pleasure of place on the runway, alongside two first-century Roman runners on mortgage from a museum in Naples.
The concept was to focus on the prouder features of Italian historical past, in distinction to the state’s messy trendy political state of affairs. Blazy stated the various overcoats, a few which had leather-based linings flanging out over leather-based neckties, had been additionally impressed by his time within the nation. “The layering is one thing I like about Italy. Its type, its attract of trend. When I’m in Italy I all the time take a look at how men and women do the layers. It’s very refined, even when it doesn’t work. It’s so private,” he stated.
There have been an infinite variety of non-leather-related concepts and strategies throughout the gathering’s whopping 81 seems, too, because of an intentional determination so as to add to slightly than edit the gathering. However Blazy closed the present by bringing again an previous favourite: these trompe l’oeil denims. Earlier than heading to his personal afterparty, Blazy stated he did so to shut the chapter on his first three collections—described in accompanying present notes because the “Italia trilogy”—implying that subsequent season will deliver a complete new set of characters into Blazy’s Bottegaverse. It was then that I noticed that Blazy’s boiled wool overshirt was—duh—really product of leather-based.
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