In Milan, Bottega Veneta and Diesel showcase high-flying technique

Milan Fashion Week delivered a particularly intense fifth day on Saturday, with the collections for Spring/Summer 2025 being rather seductive. Two houses in particular stood out, showcasing their incredible expertise: Bottega Veneta and Diesel, each in their own segment, vying with each other in talent and inventiveness with original and desirable proposals celebrating Made in Italy.

Once again, Diesel pulled out all the stops, inviting its guests into an immense hangar littered with scraps of blue fabric, which covered the seats and even the imposing columns standing in the centre of the space. In all, 14,800 kilos of textile scraps intended to be thrown away will in fact be recovered after the show and reused in industry, according to the flagship brand of the Italian fashion group OTB. With their zombie eyes, the models walked across this immense blue field as if they had landed on a new planet. 

Their clothes, torn and worn to the bone, looked like rags, but they have never been so sophisticated, the fruit of infinite experimentation and complex treatments. For example, the brand used its own fabric scraps to make recycled cotton yarn for certain items. Another example is a coat with a plush effect, entirely handmade from leftover spools of denim thread in shades of blue, green and yellow.

Now that he has left Y/Project, the Parisian brand he helmed for ten years, Glenn Martens has plenty of time to concentrate on the Italian denim label, where he has been creative director since the end of 2020. And he’s doing a brilliant job, further raising the brand’s game with a stunning collection, where the boundaries between denim and denim effect are all but invisible.

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The Belgian designer continues to experiment. He is concentrating ever more on the concept of wear, with impressive work on textures. For example, by being finely tapered, denim mini-shorts are extended into fine fringes, transforming into a skirt. The same technique has been used to create lace fringes that are embedded here and there in garments. 

It was also used in leather pieces or Princes de Galles printed on PVC, where it results in astonishing hybrid designs. Jackets, dresses and coats are extended sideways or upwards in a myriad of straps, which wrap like snakes around the neck or body.

Leather was also used to make impeccable “faux denim” blazers, while real denim was used to make pretty babydolls and summer dresses with thin straps. Nylon jumpsuits, tights and tank tops give the effect of spun stockings, while the Prince of Wales was used in a bodysuit and a tight-fitting jersey dress, or in a totally shabby suit.

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Bottega Veneta, the Italian label belonging to the Kering group, closed the day with a highly seductive collection in a playful vein. The idea was to plunge back into the world of childhood, as suggested by the layout of the showroom, with its string of poufs in the shape of friendly animals. Rabbits, bears, penguins, squirrels, ladybirds, foxes, mice, bears made up a dream menagerie for toddlers. These poufs, inspired by the famous Sacco model from Milan-based design brand Zanotta, are going on sale.

Creative director Matthieu Blazy‘s inspiration came from the scene in Steven Spielberg’s film E.T., the extraterrestrial, when the mother enters the children’s bedroom, opens the wardrobe and discovers a world of cuddly toys. He draws on this imaginary and joyful world of childhood to create a wardrobe packed with new ideas and amusing details, seen through the eyes of both the children and their parents, who at one point are seen dressed in a series of crumpled and rumpled clothes, including a tie with a corkscrew!

Suits, tailoring, dresses, everything is extremely comfortable for everyday life. But it’s a new everyday life, transformed into a wonderful adventure where anything is possible. The daddy takes his daughter to school in a grey suit with a big pink and mauve schoolbag on his back. The mum does her shopping at the supermarket, holding a bouquet of crochet-knitted flowers wrapped in a sheet of leather with a kraft paper effect while the classic plastic bag is made of leather and nylon.  Another young businessman goes to his music lesson with a bag of red sweets (made of leather) and his violin slung over his back in its luxurious leather braided case, using the house’s famous intrecciato technique.

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Matthieu Blazy works on proportions, giving them emphasis, as if the children were having fun wearing their parents’ clothes. The mannequins seemed to float in their outfits, with broad, squared shoulders, oversized jackets that sometimes come down to their knees, and very full sleeves. Shirts with fine stripes, as if stiffened and slightly cinched at the waist, were transformed into short coats, as were tartan shirts. 

The designer reinvented the trouser skirt, with a trouser leg on one side and a straight skirt on the other, all merging naturally. Elsewhere, white pullovers featured an exaggeratedly open neckline, recalling the shape of old body knits. Here and there, dresses were pinched at random or held together by frog-shaped brooches, as if a little girl were having fun trying on her mother’s looks.

This childlike world runs through the collection with joy and lightness, via an infinite number of more or less visible details. Metallic bunny ears, for example, protrude from belt buckles. The silhouettes of cuddly animals can be seen in the lapels of extra-wide collars, like this rabbit in a white leather mackintosh. A pile of matches is ready to ignite in a black knitted cardigan. A cascade of leather strips ruffles up on the head like a headdress or wig, or the mask of an imaginary monster or horseman. The knitted ensembles, poorly buttoned, are as if stained with paint in the centre. A truly ‘Wow!’ collection, as the title sums it up.