What Happens During Forever?

Timelessness is eternal, but at Matthieu Blazy's debut collection at Bottega Veneta, it reveals itself as building on the past to realise the present and evoke the future.

- Manfred Lu

Bottega Veneta has been called timeless by the press since its inception.

Time can be a ruthless conqueror. It governs all — from the flowers on a lawn doomed to whither to the empires destined to turn to dust — time never misses its mark. Even our mighty planet will one day fade into the silence of space, bound to be lost in the void of the cosmos. But time is only a matter of man’s perspective. And while time is eventual, views can change. Mark Twain once mentioned that “time and tide wait for no man. A pompous and self-satisfied proverb was true for a billion years, but we turn it around in our day of electric wires and water ballast: Man waits not for time nor tide”.

In the Bottega Veneta Winter ‘22 collection, time is a master who refuses to be commanded. During Matthieu Blazy’s debut presentation, the newly-appointed creative director demonstrated that time should be manipulated instead. From start to end, there were neither nods to specific trends observed nor intentions of manufacturing new ones. It was a navigation at the innovation of the House. The first look — an unsuspecting ensemble comprising only a basic white tank top, jeans, and a new bag adorned on fresh face model Paola Manes heavily supports this notion. Why you may ask, the answer lies in the intention. Look closer: the clothes are made of “photorealistic” leather, trompe-l’œil as they say, but executed flawlessly, lest you fail to realise.