Yahoo Finance Bottega Veneta AW17: restraint and refinement as part of a brave new fashion schedule
If a new dawn awaits for the age-old fashion system - Bottega Veneta is one of a handful of brands who have blended their men’s and women’s shows into one, the first of which the house unveiled over the weekend - then at least Tomas Maier is ahead of the game in various respects. The first is his promptness to leap headlong into the fray, alongside Burberry, Gucci and Bally, the other is how his man has always led the charge in a more fluid, more relaxed kind of luxury. This is a high-spending man who operates outside the restraints of suiting.
Maier’s womenswear nodded to the sharp-shouldered, nipped-in silhouettes of the 1940s - shot through with jolts of colour and iridescent surface shine - and that same classicism imbued the designer’s men’s clothing. There was an emphasis on structured coating - smart, solid double-breasted overcoats in slate, burgundy and windowpane checked olive wool, the collar wide and exaggerated, the shoulders broad and the waist sculpted; all in all, a welcome reprieve from the drop-shoulder, slouching cuts that have dominated the AW17 menswear season.
That sense of properness was underlined by the accessories, themselves always an indicator of the way the winds are blowing in Bottega Veneta land - soft structured pouchettes and totes were no more, instead the message honed in on substantial, rigid doctor’s bags and neat, boxy briefcases.
Befitting of the liquid silks and feather plumage of the women’s eveningwear, it was the after-dark Bottega Veneta man that emerged as Maier’s strongest thread. Brands have grappled for a while now on how to recast eveningwear afresh, and the designer’s interpretation served to take the starch and ceremony of out it, instead imbuing suits and jackets with the innate softness he often applies to tailoring.
Formal trousers and shirts with bow ties came topped with field jackets or an intarsia knit cardigan, all in Black Tie appropriate monochrome. A jacket came with a nehru collar; a more intriguing proposal than the age-old shawl shape.
Knitwear emerged as a tactile eveningwear suggestion, worn underneath tailored jackets, with the only truly serious"formal" looks - a black cashmere evening coat and a double-breasted, peak-lapel tuxedo - used sparingly, to stand alongside the woman dripping in gold lame, as those last two looks did on the catwalk beside Maier’s 40s sirens. If those women’s looks served to out-dazzle the men’s, it was only because his is a fellow who dresses with a whisper rather than a shout, and that’s always been the Bottega Veneta man’s particular USP.
