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Matthieu Blazy sure knows how to set a scene. The animal beanbag chairs—Michelle Yeoh on a ladybug, Kendall Jenner on a horse, Jacob Elordi, the new face of the brand, on a bunny—put the Bottega Veneta crowd in a buoyant mood tonight. It was like we were all kids again in a rec room, knees tucked under our chins, eager to watch our favorite show on TV.
In his two and a half years at the label, Blazy has turned Bottega Veneta into the show of Milan Fashion Week. There’s the art- and design-world adjacencies—the arkful of leather beanbags were designed by Zanotta Sacco, and some of them will be available for sale on the company’s website tomorrow. And there’s the well-curated crowd—this season’s included the trans TikTok star Jools “Very Demure” Lebron and Imane Khelif, the Algerian boxer and Olympian whose gender was questioned by the cyberbully Elon Musk: “Very cool move for them,” as my colleague texted from New York. But in the end, it’s Blazy’s clothes that put him in the league of designers that matter most. He’s the rare guy who can marry the conceptual with the coolly everyday.
The concept this season was childhood. “I was interested in the idea of wow, the wonder you have as a kid when you try something—it’s almost like primal fashion, your first experience of fashion when you try your parents’ clothes,” he said. He showed too-big jackets and one-leg pants under asymmetrical wrap skirts, and pieces like a black tank dress and khaki and navy shirtdresses with built-in wrinkles like they’d been crushed at the bottom of a trunk waiting for a game of dress-up.
The animal chairs were inspired by the movie E.T., Blazy explained, the scene where Elliott’s mom opens the closet and somehow misses the extraterrestrial hiding among all the stuffed toys. And that theme carried over to the clothes: frogs perching at the neckline of a dress and clinging to the heels of shoes, lapels in the shape of bunnies on leather coats, a scarf top printed with giant fish.
If all that sounds unserious, it was, and that’s a risk for a label with deeply serious prices like Bottega’s. Blazy was making a bet that people will share his sense of humor and his heart. It was the right bet to make. In fashion now, especially here in Milan, we’ve seen a lot of playing it safe, of brands in rehash mode or standing in place. Blazy’s fashion, in contrast, looks free, whether he’s putting the accent on craft (did you get a load of the spiky leather wigs?), elevating essentials like Elliott from E.T.’s flannel shirt and denim (which were neither flannel nor denim, I don’t think), or embellishing a top and skirt with metal matchsticks, because why not?
Then there were the simply, brilliantly chic things, like a vivid orange draped jersey dress and an icy white fringed three-quarter-length sleeve coat, and the unmissable bags, the most unusual being the one-of-a-kinds made with leather vests by students at Bottega Veneta’s school. Blazy’s enthusiasm is perceptible and catching. I think the reason we all left so jazzed is because it gave us back the feeling that propelled many of us into fashion as young people in the first place. Wow is right.
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