from the chiasmus archive: "Bottega Veneta. Ready-to-Wear Spring 2022 – Detroit." Posted on November 3rd, 2021

(Images: Bottega Veneta 2021)

Daniel Lee’s underground exclusivity continues on, as noted with my Bottega Veneta. Fall 2021 review his idea of stripping down and remodeling the Bottega Veneta benchmark post and pre the pandemic probably didn’t have much to do with humility, but more in redefining the business ethic as runway shows were shelved until countries reached their 70% + plus vaccination rates.  And yes, cynicism, oh dear cynicism is to implored that this vaccine roll out has been the most unbalanced in human history, so Lee’s exclusivity could be deemed as an earned given rather than a chosen destination, more so for the stop and go economic openings and easing of restrictions for the West to allow consumption to be in lockstep via its Spring and Summer extravagances. Of course at the peril of this thing (Covid-19), mutating and the distinct possibility that restrictions and lockdowns may even return throughout the lands, that and it’s booster jabs ad infinitum. Lee proved to set a precedent of carrying on regardless with his titled Salon shows without much interest either way.  So, yes the Bottega Veneta pageantry must be maintained and from the Fall 2021 showing in Milan, his new destination as an exhibit of Lee’s Salon stylizations, which if one is to see this as a reflection of paradoxes, is Detroit.  One of America’s poorest cities. 

And in similarity to the Fall 2021 collection, the clean modernist and militaristic looks have softened to reflect the Summer styles, yet Lee’s, conscious or not, inspirations in my opinion draws from Filippo Tommaso Marinetti 1900s Futurist pose.  With Lee mentioning  in his pre show commentary that Detroit as one of the ‘Rust Belt’ American industrial cities, for him it holds, aesthetically, that beauty of industrialization within his visual cues and urban landscapes. To which it reminds me of Marinetti’s declaration to the Italian Futurist art movement in 1909, “We declare…a new beauty, the beauty of speed. A racing motor car…is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.” Is Lee transcribing with his rigid and militaristic aesthetics as an appeal of stylized, coining historian Jeffrey Herf’s term, Reactionary Modernism? Which, in its similarity, occurred throughout the 1920s after World War Two. Am I reading into this too much?  

Maybe so, but the exclusivity of Lee’s boutique collections and his snubbing of German Covid restrictions in April 2021 when he was in Berlin, while hosting the beginning of the Bottega Veneta Salon shows, falls into place a singularity of overdoing his feverish cult-of-celebrity presence for the Italian brand, which is now as its up to third showing, utilizing, as mentioned Detroit, as Lee’s choice to host his Spring 2022 collection. There is an odd, maybe badly timed execution, considering the rust belt city is amidst a shocking crime rate with widespread poverty and being hit hard by COVID-19.  Defining Bottega Veneta as the brand that may or may not reflect modern or romanticized pop cultural roots, has any more less reflected Lee’s supercharged butch styles, which are far from couture orientated to which some commentators have decreed for his latest Spring showing. This is not a subtle collection at all, nor overly crafted, it reflects very much the previous collection as an in-your-face bluntness. Which in turn, one finds it hard to find beauty within Lee’s derived modernism and his intransigent silhouettes, rather it feels algid and forceful.

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(A.Glass 2021)