Bottega Veneta makes statement in leather goods, ready-to-wear

Pollini is looking for something to make it distinctive.
WASHINGTON POST
MILAN, Italy -- Both Bottega Veneta and Pollini are looking to transform themselves, the former into a label whose ready-to-wear makes as much of a creative statement as its outstanding leather goods, and the latter into a label that makes any statement at all.
For the first time under creative director Tomas Maier, Bottega Veneta hosted an informal show that included the clothes, handbags and shoes on models posed in little scenes. The most intriguing thing was how the clothes draw on the creative energy of the leather goods and the way the company's historical signatures -- the butterfly emblem, the woven leather -- were incorporated into the ready-to-wear. The basket-weave technique is used to beautiful effect in a multicolored skirt that looks as though it was created out yards of glittering ribbon, for instance. And a day dress is covered in a butterfly print that has been blown up until it is almost an abstract pattern.
Leather goods prevail
Still, Bottega Veneta is overwhelmingly a leather goods firm. While the ready-to-wear boasts a quality of calm luxury, it is far outshone by handbags studded with tiger-eye stones or woven with pinpoint crystals, and shoes stitched from crocodile and ostrich skins that have been dyed the color of jelly beans.
Pollini still has a long way to go before it has a discerning aesthetic voice. It has hired designer Rifat Ozbek, once well known for his ready-to-wear collections inspired by the aesthetics of Turkey and the broad sweep of the Middle East and North Africa -- a kind of Fertile Crescent chic. After some years in retirement, Ozbek is back and applying his ethnic flourishes to felted wool skirts and heavy overcoats.
The results are not particularly compelling. They almost have the effect of ethnic costume; the only thing missing was the headdress and the appropriate national orchestra strumming on its version of a lute.