The great outdoors was calling this morning at Bottega Veneta. It’s Indian summer here in Milan, and everyone working in the city is trying to hold on to that serene vacation mood while the sunshine lasts. So is Tomas Maier, it seems, as he showed a collection inspired by “big country,” open air, trekking, and sailing. The farther he can get from an urban environment, he says, “the better it gets.”
With the exception of teenagers, most everybody can relate to that impulse, and Bottega Veneta has never been for the underage anyway. Maier’s self-appointed task is to get inside the desires of women with money to spend, and for Spring he is persuading them to crave more casual clothes. He opened with looks evolved from tracksuits, with zippered jackets and cropped pants; throughout his daywear, he wove a brownish-green camouflage theme patched in with leopard print. On the feet: flat loafers, thong sandals, and clogs.
Still, there’s no avoiding the fact that Bottega Veneta’s customers must eventually face the city and its various social occasions. So for the urban jungle, there was a tailored pantsuit and blouse printed in Maier’s abstract camo pattern—not exactly designed for merging into the background but rather for standing out from the herd as a bold fashion-adopter (printed pantsuits have been head-turners at Gucci, Versace, and Roberto Cavalli, too). There was one intricately pieced red leather and python coat and several patchworked shift dresses that radiated the kind of highly crafted exclusiveness Bottega Veneta fans love.
What do you do when you want to bring a sense of the big outdoors to party dresses, though? Maier’s solution: frocks in techno-cottons, ingeniously wrapped and grommeted, with slim guy-ropes as shoulder straps. They weren’t exactly tents, but some of them had that feeling about them. Maybe for a woman who’d secretly rather spend her summer nights under the stars?
