September 27, 2026 |
Louise Trotter lightened up her Bottega Veneta collection with loosening up her silhouette with airy silks, linens and cotton pieces decorated with homespun, hand-done details. Her broad shouldered jackets were worn with gently ballooning skirts and fringed macramé ballet flats. Trousers were tailored in ultra light unlined silk.
The designer explains she’d been thinking about that summer transition from city to sea, where people go from being on-duty to out of office. “It was a message of in-between: in between seasons of in-between lifestyles,” she said backstage. Her focus was on lightening everything up.
“We were a house of craft. Hand craft is really our local. But there was a lot of work this season on creating craft with lightness,” she said, and tasked her atelier with finding techniques that combined that weightless quality with wearability, “but still have all of the incredible handwork that this house is capable of doing.” Openwork oversize knits were crocheted from silk ribbons, silk blouses (some worn by the men) had folksy lace inserts or crochet collars.
She singled out the lace and macramé pieces in particular. Especially the dresses made from patchworks of different lace and crochet techniques. “Some of it was hand-knitted. Some of it was hand stitched, and it was made all by the hand. Everything is hand-paced, and everything is handmade.”
There was a deliberate rawness to some pieces. Perfection and polish was not the aim said Trotter. Instead she said, “There was a language between things being quite polished and a language with things being a little more organic.” One red leather sack dress was made from such slender intrecciato (the house’s signature woven leather) that it looked like linen. Trotter left that piece un-dyed, in order, she said, to “see all of the perfect infections”.
That sense of things being a little undone expressed the feeling of summer, she said, “when we transition into a mood that is much freer.” That sense of freedom extended to the accessories with supersized intrecciato raffia bags macrame leather sun hats and playful floral buttonholes made entirely from leather.
Photography courtesy of Bottega Veneta.
