Milan Autumn/Winter '08

Bottega Veneta
Tomas Maier has a goal: true effortlessness in dressing. ‘Simple, that’s the idea’ he told us after the show. That restraint meant colour was reduced to just one per look, detail reduced to couture-like construction and adornment reduced to the intricate and richly coloured bags in exotic skins and the fine jewellery (bag and cuff in the same hand, naturally). Colour, as usual, was very studied and refined with Baltic blue, dark red, purple, pine and plenty of black. Fine fabrics got to do all the talking, from the raw-cut cashmere bonded to chiffon cut into ribbons and sewn onto a coat of the same cloth giving the ‘illusion of fur’, to the fluid silks draped asymmetrically into the waist, or the silk georgette cut into overscale sequins.

Images: Catwalking.com