New York is full of characters. Power brokers up at dawn. Charity-circuit types. The lady who goes down to the bodega in her bathrobe. With a shiny new Madison Avenue flagship to rally around, Tomas Maier brought his Fall Bottega Veneta collections for men and women to New York, and took our great city and its denizens as muse.
Fashion Week here is in the midst of a significant identity crisis. New York’s star designers are jumping ship for Paris, while others are opting out of formal shows for studio appointments. The accomplished, experienced Maier arrived from Milan not a moment too soon. House BV secured the American Stock Exchange as a venue (a loaded metaphor in this turbulent week on Wall Street) and built out a set complete with a working fireplace and a John Chamberlain sculpture. Celebrities were enlisted and clients jetted in from all over the U.S. One-off events can be tricky to get right, though, and this one wasn’t without its frustrations—the single, tiny entranceway for the hundreds of us that came to see the show being first and foremost, with the distance between the runway set and the audience a close second. Guests who stuck around for cocktails had a better chance of seeing the exquisite details on these clothes close-up; after the models did their circuits, they lounged on Gio Ponti chairs, gathered around a pair of dinner tables, and otherwise lingered to mingle among the crowd.
Maier is devoted to craft, and the workmanship that went into these pieces was not only thoughtful, with its allusions to the skyline, but also quite elaborate. A trio of multicolored wool dresses inspired by the grillwork found in New York City elevators, for example, weren’t printed, but painstakingly embroidered and cut away, revealing not one, but two layers underneath. Other pieces were filigreed with the finest silver chain, as were bags, because why not? In the end, though, this was less an ode to the city’s shining architecture than Maier’s salute to what he sees as New Yorkers’ bold, brave, “there’s a no to nothing” spirit. “Among millions of people, it’s nice to make a mark,” he said. That runs contrary to a statement he made on the occasion of BV’s 50th anniversary: “To be a Bottega customer you have to like something quiet.” Not this time. This time there were jewel tone silk pj sets and onesies for morning trips to the bodega. There’s no place like New York. Is there a lesson there for our displaced native designers?
