Tuesday 16 October 2012

Blur The Lines | Bottega Veneta Spring/Summer 2013



“It’s easy for a woman to dress in a way that sends a simple message: serious or sexy or bohemian or whatever,” says Creative Director Tomas Maier. “It’s much harder to come across in a multifaceted way. For spring, we wanted to make clothes that blur the lines, that offer a more complex idea. These are clothes for women who’d rather not be summed up in a word or two.” 

After an unexceptional start to the Milan season that has seen runways awash with photocopied visions of the Swinging Sixties and the seventies not to mention a plethora of none-too-subtle homages to many of the recent collections or archives of international design innovators it was a relief to find some thoughtful, adult clothes on the Bottega Veneta runway.

Enjoy the Bottega Veneta SS 2013 fashion show at the end of this post! LoL, Andrea

















Tomas Maier goes his own quiet way, making clothes, as he said in his program notes, “for women who’d rather not be summed up in a word or two” designs that showcase the exceptional workmanship of his ateliers.

His show focused on tidy little feminine frocks (not a long gown among them). It opened with pretty flower-print dresses in an unusual palette of soft caramel, gray, vanilla, and dusty blue with charcoal, with a strong late-thirties and forties flavor that gave his girls the look of Agatha Christie heroines. But if Maier started with a historic reference, he injected his own innovations, splicing together panels of several different prints or cutting out individual flower heads and appliquéing them to form daisy chains running down the front of a dress. Panels of snakeskin were set into the kick pleats in the front of a skirt or slithering down a blossoming back.







A brace of liquid jersey dresses had virtual necklace garlands padded into the necklines, others had strips of shiny snake edging, fluted hems, and butterfly sleeves (like the signature dresses of the great British classicist designer, Jean Muir).

The house’s craftsmanship was also evidenced by short evening dresses with a Madame Grès flavor but instead of that legendary couturier’s famous jersey pleats, these achieved a similar visual effect with myriad softly color-shaded rouleaux strips a refinement of a technique that some haute couture houses struggle to achieve (and doubtless at commensurately giddy price points).

More modern were the armorial crustings of silver lozenges on the plastrons of pale cotton dresses or shirt-like tunics. The transparency and perforated effects that are everywhere this season were subtly translated for customers who may not feel comfortable revealing great swathes of flesh. A point d’esprit cardigan jacket shadowed the horizontal ribbon strips of the unfinished peach-colored chiffon of the dress beneath, for instance, or a trellis of jet beads, evaporating towards the hem, was embroidered over a flowery chiffon frock.

The house’s signature butterflies alighted in clusters on buckles of belts that defined trim waists, on the toes of the thick-heeled platform shoes, and on the flat satchel purses worn, in the fashion of the season, pinioned by a firm elbow to the side of the waist symbols, perhaps, of a certain lightness of touch and of an undeniable prettiness.
























Selections by ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories 

Photo Credit/Source: © VOGUE
Runway: Photography by © Marcus Tondo/GoRunway
Details: Photography by © Gianni Pucci/GoRunway



SEE ALSO ... 


Fall/Winter 2012/13 Collection






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