In between his last show and this one, Bottega Veneta’s Daniel Lee swept London’s Fashion Awards, scooping up four statuettes, more than any designer has ever managed to win in a single year before. Among the prizes were designer of the year and brand of the year. Lee has the industry’s attention, that’s clear. Fashion loves a new guy, and collectively we’ve determined he’s “it.” There was not one but two major profiles of Lee published in the days before this Milan show. Tonight’s collection, his third on the runway, suggests he has the goods to back that up.
He definitely has the guts. After scoring his first hit with the Pouch bag, a clutch that shrugged off the house patrimony woven intrecciato leather, he did the contrarian thing this season: He embraced the intrecciato. Only his intrecciato pouches come with a difference. They’re double-face, meaning they’re unlined and the leather strips are double-sided, so the same exceptional workmanship visible on the exterior of the bag is exposed on the interior. It’s the kind of modernizing touch—apparently instinctual but in the end quite thoughtful—that Lee is making his own. Consider another: a high-heeled sandal that curled ergonomically around the ankle and was made on a 3-D printer, BV’s first stab at the process and quite a sexy one.
Previewing the accessories at a showroom appointment, Lee extemporized about Bottega Veneta: “When you look at the brand’s beginnings, everything it made was so soft. I find that super inspiring.” That thinking informed the ready-to-wear he put on tonight’s runway. But equally, so did the fact that at 34 Lee is part of the streetwear generation, a cohort that came up wearing Nike trainers and clothes that put an emphasis on cool and comfort. Explaining his approach to fall at BV, he asked, “How do we put ourselves together in a considered, elegant way but still feel comfortable?”
His answer was stretch. Even the men’s tailoring was built with stretch in it, he said, so it moves with the wearer. This was the big change from his debut to today. Last February he seemed mostly concerned with the profile cut by a man or a woman in Bottega Veneta. A year later he’s come to understand that the way his clothes feel to the bodies inside them is just as important a selling point. That’s why you’ll see a big emphasis on both knit dressing and jersey, for both day and evening. The other major talking point here was all the fringing. For one reason or another fringe has been a popular motif in Milan—see also Prada and Jil Sander—but no one has been as audacious on the subject as Lee. His fringed shearlings will be instantly identifiable on the street a year from now, though truth be told, they would have been more powerful if fringe wasn’t already such a collective movement.
This was a confident outing, one that leaned into controlled repetition to drive its points home. Lee has quite handily established his Bottega Veneta as the coolest brand in town. He said he’s been spending a lot of time at La Scala watching dance performances; he likes all kinds, from ballet to modern. With the wind at his back at BV, going forward he should give himself freer rein to explore—to let go.
