The first designs on the Bottega Veneta runway during Milan Fashion Week made you think about two artists, Yayoi Kusama and Paolo Scheggi. Thomas Maier's A/W 15 creations were indeed covered in perfect dots that called to mind the visually mesmerising patterns of the Japanese artist or Scheggi's geometrical pierced surfaces.
There were dots in a variety of shades and colour combinations, for all tastes: from Op-Art black/brown dots on white backgrounds to pink dots on black pants or dots sprinkled on the Lurex vests (in retro shades à la Wes Anderson such as burnt orange and purple) matched with conservative silk blouses and men's trousers covered in ordered sequences of dots.
The dots reappeared on the skirts that peeked from the transparent PVC inserts on leather coats or on coats and jackets. At times they covered not just the external surface, but also the internal lining, creating strong visual contrasts of teal/black and yellow/black or green/black and violet/black.
Arty abstract strokes followed on coats and pantsuits, jacquard sweaters and sweatshirts while the lace-over-print dresses with bejewelled diamanté necklaces in the second part of the collection (smaller polka dots also appeared in this section of the collection) were maybe less arty and more romantic.
Program notes explained that this was about celebrating "the beauty of individualistic dressing": Maier was indeed trying to offer more playful pieces to wearers to give them the chance to be a bit more free by choosing bold colour combinations.
The endless circle grids - printed or embossed rather than pierced and punched out as it happened in other collections such as Comme des Garçons' Autumn/Winter 2014 menswear and Dior's Spring/Summer 2014 Haute Couture - also seemed to be references to the Internet and the dots scattered in the various URLs, or in the pixellated images that fill up our vision every day.
Yet they also pointed towards industrial grids, especially when applied to jackets and coats. Some of the dotted grids made you think about certain images in the annual Decorattivo manuals from the '70s that featured graphic materials and pictures aimed at inspiring designers and decorators. One series in a Decorattivo volume from 1976 focused for example on dotted and punched out surfaces and included an internal section of a tire, radio-isotope containers, compositions of alphabet biscuits and printed cotton fabrics from the 1850s.
Some garments also pointed towards Gijs Bakker's chair with holes and therefore towards another interior design/fashion connection. While Bakker drilled holes in a maple chair to make it visually and physically lighter, reducing with a clever trick its weight, Maier stated he wanted his garments to have a freer and easier (and therefore lighter?) attitude about them and tried to achieve this not by drilling holes, but via prints and embossed effects.
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