New creative director: Come and go at Bottega Veneta

That was fast.

It usually takes months for a luxury home to commit to a new creative director.

A person for the vacant position at Bottega Veneta, however, was quickly found on Monday.

Just over three weeks ago, the Italian brand, with headquarters in Milan and roots in Vicenza, traveled to Detroit for its show with a fashion crowd.

At that time, the creative director was still Daniel Lee, British, 35 years old.

He had learned his trade under Phoebe Philo from Celine.

When he started at Bottega Veneta three years ago, he began to make a name for himself.

His rise was meteoric.

Jennifer Wiebking

Editor in the "Life" section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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Tomas Maier, born in Pforzheim, had previously worked for the company for 17 years and promoted Bottega Veneta to the premier league of luxury brands.

Maier's greatest coup: Instead of a logo in times when the It-Bag was supposed to satisfy needs, he stood for a more subtle form of luxury with the intrecciato weave pattern.

The slogan for this:

. 

He is responsible for mini platform boots this winter

It stayed that way under Daniel Lee.

The Briton generously enlarged the Intrecciato pattern after starting in 2018 and put it on apart from classic, muted colors, for example in lime green.

His hits include the cassette bag and the crumple pouch clutch.

He is also responsible for the fact that hardly a new pair of boots can do without a chunky, mini platform sole this winter.

The influencers quickly got on with his designs and are even said to have been willing to pay money for them themselves.

For a designer today, that is equivalent to an accolade.

Success was a foregone conclusion.

Then came the pandemic. Daniel Lee tried a daring communication strategy for luxury brands in the age of Instagram. He had Bottega Veneta's social media accounts closed. Instead of big shows on the occasion of the fashion week in Milan, the brand organized obscure salons, in London with cell phones banned, in Berlin during the lockdown including an illegal party or in Detroit, where hardly any fashion people live. On Wednesday, after three years of working together, the Italians and the British parted ways.

Immediately it was said: Phoebe Philo could follow him, in a sense the Jil Sander of this century, who is always in conversation when a managerial position is vacant somewhere, who said goodbye to Celine five years ago and announced in the summer that they have plans for a new label. Phoebe Philo seemed unlikely at Bottega Veneta simply because she is connected, if at all, to Bernard Arnault and LVMH. And because Bottega Veneta's owner is called Kering, the other big luxury company in the world. 

Another Bottega Veneta announcement came on Monday: Daniel Lee is followed by Matthieu Blazy, born in 1984, Belgian and French citizenship.

Up to now he was head of design under Lee, before that he worked with Raf Simons and was chief designer at Maison Martin Margiela, where people like to keep their own people in the background, in the spirit of the founder, who is still covert to this day.

In 2014 Blazy's Instagram account, and with it himself, was exposed as a designer at Margiela.

Since then he has been more public - and has become better known.

From Monday to Tuesday, his Instagram followers tripled.