Bottega Veneta Winter 2023 Collection
The odyssey of the cast continues, and yet they are now character archetypes in transformation, mutable and moving, traveling from the ordinary to the extraordinary. There is a questioning of what it means to be chic and when it starts. From the morning ritual of the bombshell in her transparent white chemise and bed socks (that dress belies its material complexity while those socks are knitted leather shoes) to the sartorially obsessed industrialist in his pinstripe nightshirt or ‘grey flannel’ pajamas (all fully realized in nappa leather). There is an exploration of the idea of ‘getting changed’ from its everyday meaning in the early silhouettes to its more fantastical promises later on, where a new mythology takes shape. The parade is a place of priests and playboys, sleepwalkers and streetwalkers with sirens of the screen and the ancient seas. Above all, it is a place where there is the joyful, emotional and personal pleasure of dressing up, of gaining the confidence to be whoever the wearer wants to be through clothing. Here, craft is reconfigured as innovation, with historical silhouettes revived and reinvented, scooped, boned, slit and suspended. Botticelli’s Chloris and Flora from ‘Primavera’ (c1482) are reconfigured for today. The intricate silk hand embroideries were recreated and rearranged, a new turning of their metamorphosis.
The collection and show are treated like a game of Exquisite Corpse, where there is an unfolding of possibilities. Chimerical creatures emerge, transformed through cut and craft, a splicing of codes of volume and technique, shaggy fil coupe jacquards, and the Intreccio take the form of a new kind of skin, becoming cascading scales and feathers, finding new configurations in clothing and leather goods. Murano glass gains added malleability as a medium, clutched by these new creatures when applied as the translucent handles of Sardine bags. It points to the end of one part of the Bottega Veneta story and the beginning of another, of a new mythology.
“I loved the idea of the parade in Italy; a procession, a strange carnival, a crowd of people from anywhere and everywhere and yet somehow, they all fit and go in the same direction. I wanted to look at what makes people gather together in a place without hierarchy, where everyone is invited.” Matthieu Blazy
In the Philippines, Bottega Veneta is exclusively distributed by Stores Specialists, Inc., and is located at Greenbelt 4 and Shangri-La Plaza Mall East Wing. Visit www.ssilife.com.ph or follow @ssilifeph on Instagram for more information.