Bottega Veneta boss Bartolomeo Rongone on reawakening fashion’s sleeping giant

“Our mission is to be recognised as the most desirable luxury brand in the world,” says Bartolomeo Rongone, chief executive at Bottega Veneta. “Exclusivity is a guiding principle for us. We believe in creating exceptional pieces with a value that only appreciates over time.

“This aligns closely with the vision of our founders, who were united in a commitment to extraordinary, enduring leatherwork and whose original motto was ‘Labor et Ingenium’, meaning, craft and creativity,” explains Rongone.

This fixation can be witnessed first-hand at the freshly revamped Bottega Veneta store, which reopened its doors at the end of May in Mall of the Emirates. Remodelled entirely to align with the vision of creative director Matthieu Blazy, the store is both intimate and exceptional. According to Rongone, it now proudly stands as a testament to Bottega Veneta’s “deep connection to Italian materials and craft”, told in the studied use of concrete, Italian walnut wood and Verde Saint Denis marble.

The Dubai store is one of many worldwide to receive the treatment, and it serves as a natural update to the fashion brand’s legacy.

Founded in 1966 as a leather goods house, Bottega Veneta has always held craftsmanship and artisanal techniques at its core, even inventing intrecciato, its own leather-weaving method that remains a signature to this day.

Rongone says the design of the store blends “traditional Italian materials with a modernist aesthetic. It’s about creating a physical space that allows for imagination.”

Speaking before the new store opened, Rongone says the space has been designed with the region’s “most discerning clientele” in mind, who will be able to enjoy what he describes as “exceptional new client experiences, including by-appointment-only private salons, unique made-to-order collections, and high-end exclusives tailored specifically for our Middle Eastern customers”.

Describing this audience as “above all, sophisticated and refined”, Rongone explains that “given the region’s unique mix of contemporary flair alongside honoured traditions, it is no surprise that we feel a strong connection, especially around shared community values that are integral to the founding of Bottega Veneta”.

Interestingly, these are more than lofty words. For Ramadan 2022, the fashion house launched The Square majlis, designed by Lebanese architect Carl Gerges, as a space for friends and families to come together. Even as the watchful gaze of both Rongone and Blazy infuses the Italian house’s tradition with a bold new verve, people are still at the heart of everything it does.

Having previously worked at Celine under Phoebe Philo, and at Calvin Klein alongside Raf Simons, Blazy joined Bottega Veneta as ready-to-wear design director in 2020 under Daniel Lee. He took over as creative director in 2021, debuting his first collection in February 2022. The show marked a shift from the buzzy, trend-based company Bottega was under Lee to a house embedded in timeless, unostentatious luxury.

Blazy set the tone for the collection with an opening look of a simple white cotton vest and blue jeans. Except, of course, they were anything but simple, but rather crafted from leather, carefully treated to appear like something else.

The following season, he enlisted Kate Moss to model what appeared to be a checked flannel shirt, but that again was constructed from leather and dyed 12 times to achieve the final result. Able to lean on the remarkable expertise at the specialist leather house he now heads, Blazy is delving into the world of the everyday, taking items and transforming them into moments of astonishing luxury. Case in point, the Kalimero bag and thigh-high boots from his debut collection were each woven as one piece, without seams.

The creative director’s ability to steep complex, sophisticated pieces with a light, offhand style is not lost on the fashion crowd, who has dubbed his work “mundane beauty”.

Or, as Rongone puts it, Blazy has “distilled these ideas with designs that are infinitely wearable in ordinary, everyday settings while being extraordinary in their material, cut and craft.”

“It’s a vision he launched with the trompe l’oeil denim-print leather trousers and one that continues to characterise his collections. To me, it’s the ultimate in luxury because it is really about the intimacy and intricacy of the design and this very personal pleasure and knowledge in what you are wearing,” he says.

When Rongone joined as chief executive in 2019, Bottega Veneta was regarded as something of a sleeping giant. Beloved and highly respected, but lacking edge. Under his careful hand, it has been reinvigorated with a dazzling new energy, without diluting its DNA.

“Craft and creativity have been at the heart of our brand from the very beginning. To preserve the connection with these founding principles, we brought attention back to the highest quality product, which embodied innovative, imaginative creativity and our artisanal savoir-faire,” Rongone says.

“Take, for example, the Tosca bag. Each bag is woven by hand, by a single artisan, out of 145 meters of tubular fettucce in paper calf leather – and without a single stitch. There are very few craftspeople in the world qualified to work at this level. And because each bag is hand-woven, each bag is truly unique.”

The defining essence of the house, he explains, is its dedication to absolute luxury. “We count days, not hours, to make our products, and we design each of our pieces to last a lifetime and beyond.”

This dedication extends to the arts, he explains. The brand was founded in Venice – a city famous for its rich cultural history – so it is a natural pairing.

“We launched a series of cultural initiatives to engage with other craftspeople and creative communities, from our Bottega for Bottegas initiative supporting small-scale artisans to our cultural exchange series The Square, and our Milan Design Week collaborations with Gaetano Pesce and, most recently, Cassina and Fondation Le Corbusier.”

This intriguing blend of art, culture, fashion and savoir-faire will already be familiar to the house’s clients, for whom discretion is valued as highly as craftsmanship.

“The Bottega Veneta customer has always been discerning, self-confident and engaged with the world. We are a no-logo brand, celebrating individuality and self-expression that is not ostentatious,” he says.

Rongone clearly is fully behind Blazy’s vision, as the designer looks to cater to the everyday needs of Bottega Veneta’s well-heeled clients.

“Matthieu has this beautiful concept of ‘craft in motion’,” Rogoe says. “As a brand specialised in bags and leather goods, ideas of movement have been there from our beginnings, and you see how they continue to be expressed right through to our latest summer 2024 collection, with pieces like the Citta bag or new iterations of the Andiamo bag – all perfectly designed for those on the go.”

This year has been a momentous one for the house, which also launched a home collection featuring artisanal baskets, blankets, trays and cushions. September will bring yet another big launch – a perfume.

The aim, it seems, is to make the brand’s aesthetic more accessible to a wider audience, which Rongone sees as in keeping with the house’s excellence.

“Our exceptional artisans are integral to the quality of our product. At our atelier in Montebello, near Venice, we have this extraordinary craft knowledge that has been passed down from one generation to the next, and that is evolved and reimagined every new season,” Rongone says.

“As Matthieu likes to say, our craft is a timeless technology. Our clients can always be inspired anew while knowing that any Bottega Veneta piece will be treasured for a lifetime and beyond.”

Updated: June 16, 2024, 4:04 AM