BOTTEGA VENETA 2024 pring/Summer Collection

The journey of Bottega Veneta continues with creative director Matthieu Blazy, and here the collection travels literally and metaphorically. Encompassing an array of influences from all over the world, both manmade and natural, there is a global sweep to craft in motion this season.

Models traverse the world of the show, walking across continents and oceans, spread before them. In the collection, there is a quest for inspiration through dislocation, through travel and imagination, from joys to tribulations. Once more character archetypes are on-the-go, in transformation, mutable and moving; travelling from the ordinary to the extraordinary, no longer bound by the manmade they begin to encompass the primal, natural world in what they wear.

From the initial silhouettes, the simplicity of knitted swim costumes almost from another time, there is once more the notion of ‘getting changed.’ There is the shedding of the clothes of previous seasons that they carry.in thei rover sized , basket-woven intrecciato bags and vast duffles, with the business-like becoming something altogether  more subversive. From the city commuter dreaming on a train to the castaway’s existence on a shore; the strong, constructed shoulder, tailored suiting give way to the homespun, natural and primal. Notions of ‘national dress’ become ‘international dress’, a blending of archetypes from all over the world, nomadic in mood and meaning, at times wearing f lags of imaginary places. The apotheosis of the travel trinket exists in accessories: leather newspapers from around the globe that morph into Foulard bags; tropical leaf, pool blue, raffia and rope shoes and bags are far from disposable, all startingly realised in highly crafted leathers; while ceramic and over-sized intrecciato Sardines take on an almost novelty aspect in this context.

The simple wonder of dressing without boundaries is utilised and nautilus shell dresses, of f lowers, fireworks and rock pleasure of dressing up, of being whoever and whatever ravelling in the imagination as much as in the world through and won.