CONSTRUCTION SITES, AR APPS, CIRCULAR PROPS: BOTTEGA VENETA’S SPACES ARE FACILITATING ITS TRANSFORMATION
01 mar 2022, for frame
Location
Piazza S. Fedele, 4, 20121 Milano MI, Italy
Design, Production
Brand
One of Milan Fashion Week’s most anticipated shows, the event took place at the Palazzo San Fedele – Bottega Veneta’s future headquarters.
Key features
The Milan palazzo was built between 1870 and 1872, to serve as the historical seat of the Manzoni Theater – studio Asti Architetti is currently leading a renovation that will transform the space into Bottega Veneta's headquarters by 2023. To spotlight the key location while hiding its construction elements, Bureau Betak clad the façade in the brand’s signature parakeet green. Notable as the first show of new Bottega Veneta creative director Matthieu Blazy, the AW22 presentation centred on a similarly verdant carpet.
Audience members sat on chairs constructed from crushed metal – removed from a recycling process – that are set to return into the cycle. This method of chair design harks to Blazy’s philosophy of ‘craft in motion’, what he calls the ‘pragmatic essence of a leathergoods company’. Bottega Veneta’s brand identity also came through the soft black leather pillows, contrasting the distressed silver of the metallic cube seating. Following the architectural composition of the room, the seating layout was arranged in a circle.
Nearly a year ago, Bottega Veneta exited its official social media under the previous creative director Daniel Lee to create its own digital space. In the run-up to Blazy’s debut collection, Bottega Veneta launched a new AR-powered app described as a ‘creative doorway into the world of the brand’, which sent a notification when the show was about to start.
Frame's take
After the mega-success of the previous creative director Daniel Lee – who turned Bottega Veneta into the momentum brand with his experiential and exclusive twists on the fashion show format – AW22’s presentation marked a challenging act to follow. The building’s timely renovation – a ‘new start’ for the brand – clearly communicated the idea of Bottega Veneta being ‘under construction’. The fashion space secured the visibility of the current vulnerability of the brand and proved an excellent opportunity for Alexandre de Betak to reassess the parameters of fashion shows today – a sentiment he expressed recently to the Financial Times. Bottega Veneta’s runway was a sharp contrast to other costly productions created by Bureau Betak during Milan Fashion Week AW22, emboldening the practice’s ambition to take a more sustainable direction with fashion shows.