CRAFTING the FUTURE

SPEAKING BACKSTAGE just after he wrapped his Spring 2024 show in Milan this past September, Bottega Veneta creative director Matthieu Blazy waxed enthusiastically about craft. His collection was a showcase for the Italian house's tradition of handwork and tailoring, punctuated by pieces like a crochet dress decorated with raffia pom-poms individually knotted to its surface.

- BROOKE BOBB

The accessories featured leather-crafting techniques such as Bottega Veneta's signature Intrecciato weave, but with updates like reversible textured strips of leather that mimicked banana leaves on bags and sandals. "Those are very small details, but for us they're meaningful," Blazy later explained. "It's about saying, 'Where can we push savoir faire? And how do we try to innovate?' Where people call craft 'dusty,' I think it's the opposite. It's a world of possibilities."

There's something magical about putting been touched by a human hand. It gives life to the piece and awakens something in the wearer: a hyperawareness of the care and attention that went into creating it.

Craft was at the heart of a number of spring collections, from the patchworked and distressed leather at Prada to the reconstructions of upcycled garments at Balenciaga, exaggerated embellishments at Loewe, and baroque lace patterns at Valentino. Meanwhile, Tod's staged its show at the Laboratori Scala Ansaldo, which has employed a number of the house's master artisans.

In France and Italy, the element of craft has long been central to high fashion, be it through the premieres of the Paris ateliers-couture masters who have spent decades training in skills like tailoring and embroidery-or the cobblers and leatherworkers who construct shoes, bags, accessories, and other items to exacting specifications and standards. These highly specialized skills have historically been passed down, for the most part, through apprenticeships and even families and are essential to the rarefied auras that surround the products themselves.