Bottega Veneta wins Wallpaper* Design Award for Best Women’s Fashion Collection A/W19
Bottega Veneta has won our coveted Wallpaper* Design Award 2020 for Best Women’s Fashion Collection Shortlist, for its A/W19 collection
WINNER
Bottega Veneta
For his debut runway collection for Bottega Veneta, Daniel Lee – formerly ready-to-wear design director at Celine and a Phoebe Philo protégé – presented a collection of subversive bourgeois silhouettes and strong biker looks that drew on the house’s artisanal leather-making history. Blazers fell slightly off the shoulder, while demure dresses boasted sculptural cut-outs and shirt dresses shimmered with square sequins. Exaggerated bovver boots and leather jackets suggested a futuristic, rebellious force, while accessories reimagined Veneta’s signature Intrecciato weave – think oversized tote bags woven from strips of leather and heeled pumps formed from cushioned quilting.
SHORTLIST
Celine
For autumn, hemlines were lowered, the micro minidress shape of Celine’s S/S19 show swapped for more a demure dimension: knee-length culottes or A-line pleated skirts. Slimane can now also lay claim to ultra-sexy, thighskimming shapes. The look, all capes, fur coats, blue denim and silk dresses, with smatterings of sequin and leopard
print, was exuberantly 1970s, and nodded to an earlier era of Celine, beloved by bourgeois Parisian doctors’ wives. Knee-high boots, horse-bit belts and gold-buttoned details were all on display in Celine’s black-and-white ads from the 1970s, and for A/W19 they took on an elegant modernity.
Christian Dior
Chiuri explored 1950s British style, drawing on the aesthetic of Teddy Girls, who favoured androgynous quiffs, silk scarves, Edwardian men’s jackets and rolled-up trousers.
Her modern take on that rebellious rock’n’roll trend? Quilted boiler suits, vinyl trench coats with a classic Dior ‘Bar’ cinched waist, swathes of Buffalo check, and bow-detail
sweaters. Silhouettes were unusually sporty, offsetting the collection’s more feminine gauzy skirts and bustier dresses. Christian Dior’s last collection in 1960 featured a long
black coat called ‘Le Blouson Noir’ in reference to the name given to Paris’ Teddy Boys and Girls. Chiuri reimagined this style, putting her own stamp on a Dior classic.
Maison Margiela
John Galliano’s A/W19 collection was an antidote to ‘digital decadence’. It featured a reduced presentation of garments that drew on the brand’s typically deconstructed aesthetic and Galliano’s reassembling-focused ‘décortiqué’ technique. Using humble menswear fabrics such as herringbone, flannel and cavalry twills, the collection featured pieces reduced to their truest form, including men’s trousers twisted into a bustier dress, a faux-leather trench sported as long shorts, and tailored trousers flattened into bulbous skirts. There were still elements of excess here: skinny jacquard trousers had colourful flamingo patterns, while wadded coats nodded to the brand’s squidgy ‘Glam Slam’ bag.
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
Prada
Something spooky was afoot for autumn, with Miuccia Prada drawing on a host of gothic references, from The Matrix to The Addams Family, in a collection that featured
stripe or lightning-bolt print high-school horror ensembles, dresses emblazoned with graphic Bride of Frankenstein prints, and utilitarian tailoring swathed in colourful fake
fur. Models stomped in (more) bovver boots and backpacks and, in a more romantic turn, sported lace capes, tweed and rose-print evening wear, and A-line skirts and accessories embroidered with oversized 3D flowers formed from drooping fronds of silk.
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Miuccia Prada
Jack Moss is the Fashion Features Editor at Wallpaper*, joining the team in 2022. Having previously been the digital features editor at AnOther and digital editor at 10 and 10 Men magazines, he has also contributed to titles including i-D, Dazed, 10 Magazine, Mr Porter’s The Journal and more, while also featuring in Dazed: 32 Years Confused: The Covers, published by Rizzoli. He is particularly interested in the moments when fashion intersects with other creative disciplines – notably art and design – as well as championing a new generation of international talent and reporting from international fashion weeks. Across his career, he has interviewed the fashion industry’s leading figures, including Rick Owens, Pieter Mulier, Jonathan Anderson, Grace Wales Bonner, Christian Lacroix, Kate Moss and Manolo Blahnik.
-
Complex and stimulating, Federico Stefanovich's industrial designs act like a bridge between culture and economics
In a rapidly changing world, the route designers take to discover their calling is increasingly circuitous. Here Federico Stefanovich tells us about his increasing desire to find his own path
By Hugo Macdonald Published
-
Amelia Stevens' playful, minimalist design 'is geared towards beauty as a function of longevity'
In a rapidly changing world, the route designers take to discover their calling is increasingly circuitous. Here we speak to Amelia Stevens about the multi-disciplinary joy of design
By Hugo Macdonald Published
-
Design practice Astraeus Clarke is inspired by cinema to tell a story and evoke an emotion
In a rapidly changing world, the route designers take to discover their calling is increasingly circuitous. Here we speak to Chelsie and Jacob Starley the creative duo behind Astraeus Clarke
By Hugo Macdonald Published