Louise Trotter’s second Bottega Veneta show was held in the brand’s headquarters in the Palazzo San Fedele, situated between Milan’s iconic La Scala and the Duomo. It was a fitting return from the city’s outskirts given Trotter’s emphasis this season on her adopted hometown; she’s British and has been living in Milan for a year, time enough to observe its hard exterior and soft interior.
“I started with this idea of Brutalism and sensuality, because for me it really sums up the feeling that I have: Milan is this sort of very Brutalist city, with a sensuality that’s a little hidden,” she told a group of journalists backstage. She also appreciates how people truly still dress up here. “It’s a long time since I’ve seen that,” she noted.
The show played out as a kind of unfolding, sculpted suiting in a mostly somber palette giving way to dresses in sumptuous, sometimes strange textures and vibrant, pulsing hues. Trotter started with tailoring, the jackets’ shoulders somewhat rounded compared to last season’s—a response, she said, to feedback on her debut. For bottoms, there were roomy pants or wrap skirts suspended from a sturdy leather belt, an idea that she said she lifted from bag construction. The men’s suits followed the same curving lines, though their layered polos and shrunken ribbed sweaters struck a more casual note than she allowed for the women’s looks.
Soon, materiality became the main event. Riffing on the traditional peacoat, she showed it in matte croc, in an intrecciato weave sprouting furry fringe, and in what might have been thick-pile velvet carved to look like astrakhan. Deciphering the fabrics became a guessing game; Trotter said she made a point of emulating furs and skins, Bottega Veneta being a “house of leather.” Silk threads rippled like curly shearling, real shearling was brushed to resemble fox, and there were technical materials in the mix too, including the shaggy fiberglass that made such an impact at her first outing, this time in bubblegum pink that grazed the ankles. It’s worth asking if women will want to envelop themselves in such figure-obscuring silhouettes, but Trotter insisted on their lightness.
Nearly all of the looks were accessorized with a hat, either salt-of-the-earth knit beanies or jaunty fringed caps that conjured nothing so much as Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 version of Romeo & Juliet. Tunic-length dresses and coats worn bare-legged or with sturdy leggings added to the picture. The most modern and desirable piece in the sensual heart of the collection was an asymmetrical black and white fringed skirt that spiraled down the legs, topped by a simple knit tank. That look did more with less.
