Bottega Veneta Names Louise Trotter New Creative Director
MILAN — Bottega Veneta has made its choice and the newly appointed creative director Louise Trotter is expected to bring a different aesthetic to the Italian luxury brand.
Bottega Veneta on Thursday said it had selected Louise Trotter to succeed Matthieu Blazy. This confirms a WWD report on Dec. 6. She will join Bottega Veneta at the end of January.
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While Blazy, who left the brand to join Chanel as artistic director of its fashion activities, brought a new type of sizzling fireworks to the brand with his inventiveness with leather, Trotter’s style so far has been even more understated as a designer than his — perhaps ideal for a brand that used to advertise its wares with the tag line of “When your own initials are enough.”
“I am pleased to welcome Louise as our new creative director. Her aesthetic seamlessly combines exquisite design with sublime craft and her commitment to cultural advocacy aligns beautifully with our brand vision,” said Leo Rongone, chief executive officer of Bottega Veneta, in a statement issued at the end of trading. “Through her sophisticated lens, Bottega Veneta will continue to celebrate its heritage while preserving modern relevance. I also want to express my profound appreciation for Matthieu, who has been an extraordinary partner in infusing our brand with desirability, emotional resonance and intellectual identity.”
Francesca Bellettini, Kering deputy CEO in charge of brand development, added that Trotter “brings a wealth of experience and a fresh perspective to Bottega Veneta’s tradition of bold creativity and unparalleled excellence. She is the ideal creative talent to carry forward, alongside Leo Rongone and the Bottega Veneta team, the remarkable journey initiated with Matthieu Blazy, to whom I extend my heartfelt gratitude for his visionary creativity.”
Trotter joined Carven in February 2023 and her first collection for the brand bowed in September last year during Paris Fashion Week. Carven had been absent from the runways and without a marquee designer for several years. Trotter reignited the label with her quietly sensual designs and her focus on textures would gel with Bottega Veneta and her predecessor’s work at the brand.
On Thursday, Carven announced the departure of Trotter on Jan. 24.
The designer said in the statement that she was “deeply honored” to join Bottega Veneta. “The house’s storied legacy of artistry and innovation is truly inspiring, and I am excited to contribute to its future and celebrate its timeless vision.”
Before Carven, Trotter held the same role for four years at Lacoste. She studied fashion design at Newcastle University, and worked at contemporary British label Whistles before moving Stateside to design for Calvin Klein, and later Gap and Tommy Hilfiger.
Trotter returned to London for a stint at Jigsaw and then served as creative director of Joseph from 2009 to 2018, a period of product diversification and international expansion for the brand.
During her four-year tenure at Lacoste, she beefed up the womenswear offering and explored innovative methods of upcycling.
Giovanna Brambilla, partner at Milan-based executive search firm Value Search, said her impression of Trotter “is that she is an eclectic and versatile designer, almost chameleonic, moving from “more casual” brands such as Gap, Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, to Joseph, “with its linear style, for a sophisticated clientele looking for daywear pieces,” and then Lacoste, where “she reinvented the brand with her patchworks, a palette of bright colors and recycled materials,” and finally Carven, with “her chic, bon ton, elegant and minimal styles, luxury but at a balanced price.”
Brambilla remarked on the different size of Carven compared with Bottega Veneta, adding that her ready-to-wear experience could further boost the category at the Italian brand, whose heritage is in accessories. “Her work with American brands could lead her to probably play a more relevant role in merchandising.” She also highlighted the fact that Trotter is a woman at a time when there are few at the head of established luxury fashion brands.
Fashion theorist, professor and curator Maria Luisa Frisa said, “We must get used to continuous revolving doors of designers, similarly to what happens with soccer coaches, because the cycle is so fast and wearing that they need to find new stimuli.” Frisa also said that a less binding link between brand and designer “helps the former stand out in people’s mind, rather than the designer’s name. More and more, it’s the machine behind the brand that needs to be functioning, and the creative director is one element, working on the heritage which is increasingly important.” She also pointed out that “today, there are very few designers who have a vision to build a whole imaginative world for the brand, behind every details.” She attributed this to the fact that designers now “often don’t work their way up” and don’t have a deep grasp of the full production cycle.
Blazy was appointed creative director of Bottega Veneta in November 2021, when he rose from ready-to-wear designer to succeed Daniel Lee at the design helm.
Born in Paris in 1984, Blazy is a graduate of famed visual arts school La Cambre in Brussels, and he started his fashion career as men’s designer for Raf Simons.
From 2016 to 2019, Blazy worked at Calvin Klein as part of the team Simons brought to New York, working on the men’s and women’s collections as design director.
Before Calvin Klein, Blazy worked in the studio of Celine under then-creative director Phoebe Philo, becoming senior designer in 2014, and for four years at Maison Margiela, ultimately responsible for its couture line, dubbed Artisanal.
The design change at Bottega Veneta is the latest shake-up at parent group Kering, which is going through the turnaround of Gucci under Stefano Cantino, who will take on the CEO role in January, working with creative director Sabato De Sarno, and C-suite changes, with Balenciaga CEO Cédric Charbit moving to the corner office of Saint Laurent in January, to be succeeded by Gianfranco Gianangeli.
Kering reported revenues fell 15 percent to 3.79 billion euros in the three months to Sept. 30, representing a decline of 16 percent in comparable terms, but Bottega Veneta, under the lead of Rongone, was a bright spot, with a 5 percent gain. The brand performed well in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East, powered by handbags, including the hugely popular Sardine style.
Bottega Veneta has been on an upward trajectory over the past few years, propelled by Blazy, whose sophisticated and highly crafted designs won consistent acclaim, and by Lee before him, who helped revive the heritage brand, with influential and youthful collections, especially the accessories — from the signature Pouch bag, which was introduced in his first collection in 2019, or the Cassette bag and the Lido sandals.
In November, the luxury brand unveiled a new Residence on Madison Avenue, which followed a first such project, Palazzo Bottega Veneta, inaugurated last June in the Italian lagoon city and housed in the 15th-century Gothic Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel.
Bottega Veneta was founded in Italy’s Veneto region in 1966 by Michele Taddei and Renzo Zengiaro in 1966. Shortly after Zengiaro left Bottega Veneta at the end of the ‘70s, Taddei handed over the company to his ex-wife Laura Braggion, who headed the company with her second husband Vittorio Moltedo.
Ohio-born Edward Buchanan joined Bottega Veneta after graduating from Parsons School of Design in 1995, and with creative director Laura Moltedo, he was tasked with developing the brand’s first ready-to-wear collection as design director. The first fashion show for the brand was staged in October 1998 at Palazzo Serbelloni. Buchanan left the company after six years to launch his own Leflesh brand with Manuela Morin, also a Bottega Veneta alumna, and Giles Deacon joined the creative team for one year.
The Moltedos exited Bottega Veneta shortly after then-Gucci Group’s acquisition and Patrizio di Marco was recruited from Céline, where he was president of U.S. operations, to join Bottega Veneta as chief operating officer in May 2001. The following month, he was promoted to CEO, while at the same time, Tomas Maier was tapped as the brand’s creative director from Hermès, thereby setting up Bottega Veneta for its reinvention.
From the brand’s signature Intrecciato woven leather bags and leveraging the strength of its artisans, the history and cultural background of the region itself, Maier had set to create a lifestyle label.
Di Marco was tasked with repositioning Bottega Veneta in the luxury range, which was a tough call because the brand had strayed from its roots and diluted its brand DNA by embracing a flashier, less luxurious identity and had very little left of the old archives.
After structuring its global organization and distribution, growing revenues more than tenfold in six years, in 2009 di Marco left the company on a high note and was tapped to lead the Gucci brand, succeeding Mark Lee as CEO.
In January 2009, Marco Bizzarri, previously at Stella McCartney, was appointed president and CEO of Bottega Veneta, and although his arrival coincided with the global recession, he also succeeded in leading the brand through another growth phase.
He continued to build the brand on discreet luxury and craftsmanship, establishing new 108,000-square-foot headquarters in Milan and investing in the company’s human resources by providing its employees with a new headquarters in 2013 — the stately 18th-century Villa Schroeder-Da Porto, ensconced in a park about 16 miles from Vicenza, in the Veneto region of northern Italy, and internalizing its own school of artisans. He drove growth in Asia and further expanded the brand’s retail footprint, opening a flagship in Milan.
In 2014, Bizzarri went on to become CEO of Kering’s newly created Couture and Leather Goods division, directly supervising most of Kering’s luxury brands. Former Valentino and Ermenegildo Zegna Group executive Carlo Alberto Beretta was appointed CEO of Bottega Veneta in January 2015 and exited a year later, succeeded by former Hugo Boss CEO Claus-Dietrich Lahrs, and then by Rongone in 2019.
In 2018, after 17 years, Maier left Bottega Veneta, succeeded by Lee.
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