September 26, 2022 |
It’s Matthieu Blazy’s world and we’re very happily living in it. A technicolour wonderland set the scene, featuring a swirl of 400 Gaetano Pesce-designed unique chairs that lined a swirling resin runway. It was here that Blazy’s vision for SS23 came to life: he wanted to create “the world in a small room”. The collection was about a “contrast of characters on the go,” where no two were the same, invited to travel through Pesce’s trippy landscape. And it was such a high. Blazy’s sophomore collection soared above his memorable debut, with a cross-generational cast swaggering down the runway in his clever concoctions. Dramatic ‘fur’ coats were printed, knotted wool silk created a new boucle and the cool casual flannel and jeans that Kate Moss sauntered down the runway in were made from Blazy’s favourite magic trick: supple nubuck. A Blazy BV collection is quite the sensory experience. Dresses swished around the ankles as hems were layered with hundreds of hand-placed beads, floral embroideries bloomed on the cotton crepe gauze ‘Chandelier’ dress. They slung those ultra large woven bags over their shoulders – the bigger the better this season – and walked in metallic gold and silver woven wedge heeled boots. Blazy was having fun after solidifying his ability last season. There was a lightness to it all, a smoothness in the way they moved to Afrodeutsche’s exclusively composed thumping beats, in flashes of brilliant turquoises, fire engine reds and island green prints.
“Moving between the archetypal and the individual, through clothing and character, I wanted to design not just for one woman or one man, but for women and men,” Blazy noted. “From the perverse banality of the everyday nubuck looks, to the eroticism of ultra-sophistication through tailoring, via the look of the bourgeois left of the past, to the souvenirs worn by a high-brow traveller… The whole world in a small room.” It was a thrilling room to be in, the kind of world we want to live in. Bottega Veneta is blazing ahead.
Photography courtesy of Bottega Veneta.
