Bottega Veneta RTW Spring 2018
Elevating sporty: one of fashion current challenges. In a sharp turn from last season’s power-gal polish, Tomas Maier took on the cause head-on at Bottega Veneta.
Maier went all-out sporty in the spirit of that old fashion cliché – with a twist, a flamboyant, shiny one. He added tony, bold embellishment in dollops of studded, bejeweled and mirrored hardware. The result was a smart, refreshing collection, one of the designer’s best for the house.
Maier’s design process always starts with his palette, an approach that goes way back, to when he worked with Li Edelkoort at her Paris-based forecasting company, Trend Union. His inspiration was the Marble Room at Kedleston Hall, a grand British country house designed by the architect Robert Adams. While that may sound a bit stuffy, it wasn’t. Rather, the room’s elegantly muted hues lead Maier to a palette of slightly dusty pastels – blues, pinks, lilacs – that delivered the intended optimism along with the level of sophistication demanded by the Bottega customer.
Maier kept his shapes simple, sporty and pragmatic for both women and men. For her: belted coat with multiple pockets; boxy jacket or cardigan; feisty collaged snake jacket and romper. Along the way he mixed colors that looked demonstrative without trying too hard as in a lilac suede jacket over peach shirt and pink snake skirt. As for that twist, the mirrors and colored-stone studs took the whole thing casual glam with attitude. Maier also used swingy, mile-long fringe on suede dresses and colorful snake borders on cotton versions.
Men’s look were equally easy, an all-sportswear lineup “but nothing designed for a workout,” Maier wrote in his show notes. A strong array of jackets – shirt, bomber, baseball silhouettes – came in suede, cotton and silk.
The strong lineup of bags came in numerous shapes and sizes, including big carryalls for women and men marked with the models’ clean-lined monograms in stitched-on leather or croc. That flagged the brand’s new personalization program that proves your own initials really are enough.
Launch Gallery: Bottega Veneta RTW Spring 2018
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