Bottega Veneta Winter Solstice 2024 Campaign [aka Resort 2025] is in play, without a big concept. Creative Director Matthieu Blazy explained that he watched a lot of Anthony Bourdain as he chose key ingredients for this collection.

“There are a lot of parallels between the pleasure of cooking and the pleasure of putting things together on the silhouette,” Blazy explained to the press at showtime. “What I really wanted to do this season, it was pure pragmatically epicurean. I just took everything I like. It was like in Italy, when the ingredients are good, you don’t need to do too much with it.”

Bottega Veneta campaign models include Awar Odhiang, Douta Sidibe, Hedi Ben Tekaya, Jennifer Matias, Lina Zhang and Liz Kennedy. Photographers Louise & Maria Thornfeldt [IG] return for another season./ Hair by Duffy; makeup by Pat McGrath

A NYT Darling Deserves His Status

Not for the first time, the New York Times Style shares another major feature on Bottega under Matthieu Blazy. In doing so, they advance the hot topic of craft beyond superb execution and often ‘dusty’ heritage into the world of the creative director role itself.

At Bottega Veneta, Blazy champions his craftspeople for their role in the creative process. His is a rare ego in the world of luxury brands. The Times writes:

Amid a fashion industry of dwindling artisanship and cheaper, faster output even at the luxury level, to elevate the handmade to a part of the ready-to-wear design process is radical, and for Mr. Blazy, it has proved galvanizing.

Bottega Celebrates Artisan-Born Creativity

Each week the Milan-based design team travels to the tiny town of Montebello Vicentino, an 18th-century villa that serves as Bottega Veneta’s production headquarters. The Times introduces us to Barbara Zanin, a 26-year veteran of the brand who became Bottega Veneta’s first director of craft and heritage in July.

The house also joined brands including Prada, Kiton, Brunello Cucinelli and the biggest conglomerate of all — LVMH — to create craft schools as pipelines to their workforces. The academy’s master artisans educate about 50 students annually in a program funded by the Bottega Veneta brand and carrying guaranteed positions for graduates.

AOC knows that Tiffany and Louis Vuitton are investing in young talents here in America, but I suspect that our young people may not have this kind of access to such highly-prized education and training programs.

In Kering World, Bottega Shines Brightly

Bottega Veneta is a rare 2024 jewel in the stable of Kering-owned brands in the challenging 2024 luxury brands business climate. While Kering-owned Gucci has fallen to its knees from a revenue and profitability standpoint, Bottega Veneta posted a 3 percent for the first six months of the year.

In many ways, creative director Blazy speaks with a voice similar to that of Brunello Cucinelli. Noting “strength and sweetness” and even “kindness” as his inspirations, Matthieu Blazy sees luxury clothes as a vehicle for channeling our shared humanity with artisans and makers treated as soulmates with buyers who carry their spirits far and wide across the world.