Becoming the creative director of a well-known and established brand has its rewards, but it can also be extremely challenging, especially if you're young and have to try and combine your own inspirations with the heritage of the brand you're heading. In the case of Daniel Lee things were even more difficult: the 32-year-old designer worked at Céline (and at Maison Margiela, Balenciaga and Donna Karan) and, when he was appointed Bottega Veneta's new creative director last June, Phoebe Philo's orphaned fans thought they had found an ally.
There were actually elements of Céline's lexicon in Bottega Veneta's collection, showcased yesterday morning in a pavilion on Piazza Sempione during Milan Fashion Week, yet the brand's DNA prevailed.
The designer opened the coed show with a simple yet well structured slip leather dress and motorcycle jackets and trousers matched with thick sturdy boots with joints around the knee area similar to those of Medieval armours, ensembles dedicated to sci-fi fans or to all the girls on a motorcycle à la Lisbeth Salander out of the Millennium saga.
Then Lee tried to move from the brand's trademark intrecciato weave and zoomed on the woven elements reducing the pattern to squares. The basic geometries were then turned into three-dimensional motifs for padded leather totes, quilted skirts, square-toe pumps and brogues.
After blowing up the maxi intreccio pattern, the designer provided a more personal interpretation by breaking it into small squares and linking them one after the other to form concatenations of consecutive squares employed to create wearable architectural constructions, such as coats, bags and skirts in white, plum and petrol green.
This technique produced a tiled effect introducing an innovative element in the house code (mind you, this is not a new technique as there have been young designers who have been experimenting along the same lines to find new ways to create seamless garments, remember the modular designs by Post Couture?).
The knitwear offer included a scoop-neck cream sweater with a thick gold chain integrated in it, chic but complicated double layer fluid dresses that seemed to twist on the models' body and men's clingy tops with cutaway necklines.
As a whole the collection was a hit and miss, with moments in which the designer didn't seem too sure about his silhouettes, or played it safe (especially for what regards the men's designs). Some designs (the ones with the leopard prints), may have also been edited out of the collection as they didn't add anything to the new Bottega Veneta semantics, but at least Lee attempted to play with dichotomies, offering lady-like elegant dresses and black leather pieces for tough girls.
Will this be the wardrobe for heartbroken art fair goers left orphaned by Philo or will we see some of these garments reappearing on the set of a dystopian sci-fi film (after all the white coat made with interlocked squares conjures up visions of a movie set somewhere in a distant future where AI has defeated humanity)?
We will discover the answer in a few months' time, since now it is too early to say if Lee's experience at Bottega Veneta is a success story, but the collection showed a new direction. In the meantime, Lee will hopefully get the chance to stay at the Italian fashion house for more than three seasons (something very common nowadays for young designers working for a big maison...), get to know the brand better and hone his design skills.
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