In the fashion equivalent of a nuclear chain reaction, Bottega Veneta announced Thursday that Matthieu Blazy, its designer of three years and the man who made it into a must-see brand in Milan, was leaving the house. He is expected to become the new designer of Chanel.
Replacing Blazy at Bottega Veneta will be Louise Trotter, currently the designer of French brand Carven, which has yet to name her replacement.
Trotter, who will take up her post at Bottega Veneta at the end of January 2025, will become the only female creative director among the stable of designers at Kering, the group that owns Bottega Veneta as well as Gucci, Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen and Balenciaga.
Trotter comes to Bottega after spending just shy of two years at Carven, a house she rescued from irrelevance and reinvented as a minimalist’s haven of accessible but plush luxury.
Her taste “seamlessly combines exquisite design with sublime craft, and her commitment to cultural advocacy aligns beautifully with our brand vision,” Leo Rongone, CEO of Bottega Veneta, said in a news release.
Trotter, 55, will inherit a house that Blazy helped transform into the brightest spot in Kering’s portfolio. For the third quarter of this year, Bottega’s revenues were just under 400 million euros ($416.6 million), an increase of 4%, at a time when Gucci’s revenues dropped 25% and Saint Laurent’s 13%.
During his tenure at Bottega, Blazy, 40, introduced fine jewelry and a genderless perfume. He was nominated as designer of the year for the 2022 and 2023 Fashion Awards in London. Celebrity fans included Jacob Elordi, Michelle Yeoh, ASAP Rocky, Julianne Moore and Jennifer Lawrence, who recently wore a Bottega dress to show off her pregnancy at the Governors Awards in Los Angeles.
A Brit, Trotter brings years of experience to Bottega, with previous creative director stints at Lacoste and the English label Joseph. At a time when fashion, and especially fashion shows, are increasingly treated as a subset of the entertainment world, Trotter, like Blazy, is a quiet but decisive (and dryly humorous) presence, known for a more personal, product-first approach to her job, and a sense of materiality and understanding of silhouette.
She is, however, less playfully experimental than her predecessor and possessed of an aesthetic that might be termed gracefully grown up. (Her work tends to be mentioned in the same breath as Phoebe Philo’s Celine and the Row.) She should be a reassuring presence at Bottega, despite the fact that she will be its third creative director in five years and despite the current upheaval in the fashion world, with eight different brands naming new designers in the last year.
To that point, Trotter said she was honored to join Bottega Veneta and “celebrate its timeless vision.”
She will make her debut in October 2025 during Milan Fashion Week. —NYT
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