When Louise Trotter presented her debut collection as creative director of Bottega Veneta in September 2025, the British designer said that working at the Italian house was like being ‘in a candy box’. It was a reference to Bottega Veneta’s superlative history of craft: founded in 1966 in Vicenza, Italy, it was built on leatherwork – specifically, intrecciato, its signature technique, which sees two strands of leather woven together in a process that takes hours of handcraft.
‘The language of Bottega Veneta is intrecciato. And it is a metaphor,’ Trotter said at the time of her debut. ‘It is two different strips woven together that become stronger – the two things make a stronger whole. Collaboration and connectivity run throughout this house and its history, from its beginnings to what it is now. It’s about different places, different people, male and female – individual parts and stories intertwined to make a stronger whole.’
The ‘Baby Campana’
Intrecciato features across a selection of five handbags that are the protagonists of a new photographic series, ‘Il Mio’ – Trotter’s proposition for the handbags that will define the months ahead (though, of course, these are objects designed to last years – even decades – in a person’s wardrobe). Photographed by Drew Vickers as a series of portraits that capture the intimacy between owner and handbag (il mio translates here as ‘what belongs to me’), the first major handbag campaign under Trotter’s tenure imagines the bags as a ‘companion for life’ – ‘collected, cherished, and passed between generations’.
The five handbags are rooted in the Bottega Veneta archive, and not simply thanks to their intrecciato construction. Several of the designs reimagine existing styles in miniature – there is the ‘Mini Andiamo’, a compact version of the cult ‘Andiamo’, which saw previous creative director Matthieu Blazy revive a metal knot emblem from the 1970s; the ‘Small Campana’, a miniature tote which was introduced for spring 2024; and the ‘Small Barbara Tote’, a smaller version of the supple shopper which was one of Trotter’s first handbag designs.
The ‘Mini Andiamo’
The others are the ‘Small Lauren 1980’ pouch, named after Lauren Bacall (the actress is a perennial Bottega Veneta muse after her character Michelle Stratton carried the style in the 1980 film American Gigolo), and the ‘Madison’, a bag named after the first Bottega Veneta store on New York’s Madison Avenue, which reimagines classic flap front, chain-handle styles in intrecciato.
Models Chu Wong, Selena Forrest and Sihana Shalaj feature in the accompanying photo series, which reflects Trotter’s vision for the Italian house – one of ‘sensuality and brutalism’, a juxtaposition that she relates to Milan, where she now lives and works. ‘I started with this idea of brutalism and sensuality,’ she said after her A/W 2026 show at the Bottega Veneta headquarters in central Milan. ‘Because for me it really sums up the feeling that I have: Milan is this very brutalist city, with a sensuality that’s a little hidden.
The ‘Madison’
