How Bottega Veneta used to look like before the "New" Bottega Re-exploring the long years of Tomas Maier's tenure

«Craftsmanship in motion» is the motto with which Matthieu Blazy decided to sum up his idea of Bottega Veneta at the time of his first collection. Blazy,  an immensely skilled designer, turned what was supposed to be a crash landing into one of the biggest successes for the Kering group. Before him, the brand had been led by Daniel Lee, who brought it back into the limelight after years in which its fame had been swamped by the clamor of streetwear, Louis Vuitton and Gucci, and a generalized maximalism that is perhaps the fiercest antithesis of its ethos. However the story of the brand whose shows had become after 2005, to quote Vogue, «tentpoles of Milan Fashion Week», is much longer than Daniel Lee's, nor was Tomas Maier's very long creative tenure of 17 years as boring as it is often believed in fact it was he who established the famous "cornerstones" of the brand while also founding the brand's School of Leather Goods in Vicenza: «Outstanding craftsmanship; timeless yet innovative design; contemporary functionality; and the highest quality materials to define anything from Bottega Veneta». Looking at all the creatives who even before Tomas Maier had relaunched the brand, such as creative director Laura Moltedo, stylist Katie Grand, and designers Giles Deacon and Edward Buchanan, it is easy to realize how the creative directors of the New Bottega added their own personal vision to an aesthetic stratigraphy that has been remarkably consistent over the years. Minus the Puddle Boots and the trompe-l'œil leather jeans, in fact, that fluid, deconstructed silhouette, that play of airy, dense textures, that oh-so-tactile approach to materials have been a foundation of the brand for very long years. It was precisely Tomas Maier (and we'll soon see how) who is credited with keeping the brand's metaphorical flame burning at a time when, on the one hand, the cheerful, colorful chaos of Y2K subcultures was rampant and, on the other, the advent of streetwear was pressing fashion.

Why did Maier leave? Il Sole 24 Ore again states that his very long tenure of 17 years was, dropped into fashion times, equivalent to a geological era - and if it was precisely in those crucial years that Virgil Abloh ascended the throne of Louis Vuitton, Alessandro Michele that of Gucci, Demna that of Balenciaga, and new phenomena such as Jacquemus, The Row, Wales Bonner, Bode, and Thom Browne captured the attention of new generations of customers. In July 2018 Daniel Lee's name was announced, in December of that year the first lookbook of the "new" Bottega was unveiled, and in February 2019 a long line of models sheathed in black leather paraded in the shadow of Milan's Arco della Pace. The rest is history.