MILAN – Bottega Veneta is not letting the 50th anniversary of its signature Intrecciato leather weave go unnoticed. To wit, the Italian luxury brand is launching Thursday a dedicated campaign called Craft is our Language.
“For 50 years, Intrecciato has embodied Bottega Veneta’s craft and creativity,” Leo Rongone, chief executive officer of the Italian brand, told WWD. “Season after season, it has both endured and evolved, finding new expressions in color, scale, size, and texture. It is the ultimate synthesis of our artisanal knowledge and aesthetic imagination.”
Photographed by Jack Davison and choreographed by Lenio Kaklea, the campaign celebrates the brand’s creativity and manual craftsmanship – literally shining a light on the hands and their gestures as a universal language connecting people across generations, cultures, backgrounds, and contexts. While Bottega Veneta teased on social media closeup images of a few hands, there’s much more behind the campaign that WWD can exclusively reveal.
The company has enrolled an expansive group of talents from the art, film, fashion, literature, music, and sports industries and artisans for the still images and short films.
These include singer-songwriter and record producer Jack Antonoff; director Dario Argento; designer Edward Buchanan, who was design director of the house from 1995 to 2000, introducing its first-ever ready-to-wear collection; artist and sculptor Barbara Chase-Riboud; singer-songwriter Neneh Cherry; filmmaker and record producer Dave Free; Lauren Hutton, a friend of the house who famously carried an Intrecciato clutch in the 1980 film “American Gigolo;” brand ambassadors Julianne Moore, Shu Qi and Stray Kids South Korean vocalist I.N; actors Troy Kotsur, Vicky Krieps, Terrance Lau and Rie Miyazawa; tennis player Lorenzo Musetti; writer Zadie Smith; singer-actress Thanaerng; recording artist and producer Tyler Okonma and conductor Lorenzo Viotti.
Lauren Hutton in Bottega Veneta’s Craft is our Language campaign
“At its heart, Intrecciato is an act of encounter, interweaving, and exchange. With this campaign, we celebrate our signature craft and its spirit of dialogue – between hand and heart, maker and wearer, past and present,” said Rongone.
Weaving together the leather strips is seen as a metaphor and a symbol of interconnectedness, reflecting the collaborative ethos of the brand, which was founded in Vicenza by a collective of artisans in 1966, and is now controlled by Kering.
“Intrecciato is distinguished by its honed proportions, diagonal arrangement, and the exceptional quality of its leather,” continued Rongone. “As a no-logo house, our signature weave holds special significance. It is the visual, symbolic, and tactile identifier of Bottega Veneta.”
The images are presented in both individual and paired compositions and, in the short films, Bottega Veneta artisans converse with Chase-Riboud, Hutton, Thanaerng, and Lau. “While Western discourse tends to distinguish between artist and artisan, Craft is our Language honors the shared etymological root of both words, derived from the Latin ars, meaning art, skill, craft,” stated the company.
Edward Buchanan in Bottega Veneta’s Craft is our Language campaign
Through the years, the brand’s creative directors have worked with the Intrecciato weave, from Buchanan, Laura Moltedo and Tomas Maier to Daniel Lee and Matthieu Blazy, who exited last December, succeeded by Louise Trotter. The campaign was conceptualized and photographed in the interim, as Trotter’s chapter will begin in September, when she will unveil her first collection for Bottega Veneta during Milan Fashion Week.
The campaign pays homage to Milanese artist and designer Bruno Munari and his classic 1963 handbook of Italian gestures, “Supplemento al Dizionario Italiano (Supplement to the Italian dictionary).” The book is now published by Corraini.
“Craft is our Language” will also include a book, to be released in September with a second installment of images and films, featuring an additional cast of talents. “The book will represent the 50 gestures that constitute a ‘dictionary’ of the language, the craft, and the values of Bottega Veneta,” said the company.
First introduced in 1975, Intrecciato has become the hallmark of the house, and it requires hours, sometimes days, of artisanal patience and skill as it involves hand-weaving slender leather strips, called fettucce, into a leather base panel, or around a wooden mold in a diagonal arrangement.