Bottega Veneta Keeps Reinventing Without Changing Anything

In June 2018, Kering handed Bottega Veneta to a 32-year-old who had spent six years assisting Phoebe Philo at Céline. Daniel Lee’s mandate was simple on paper but enormous in practice: rebuild a storied Italian leather house founded in 1966 on a single technique, intrecciato, that had spent years overshadowed by the logomania embraced by every other label.

Lee laid out his vision for the house in February 2019, when he sent his debut menswear collection down the runway in Milan and placed the strip-weaving technique front and center again. The English designer scaled it up, chunkier and more exaggerated than the tight basketweave of past decades, and paired it with an unmissable new signature: a bright, saturated green so unmistakable that it quickly became known as “Bottega green.”