Subdued Luxury and the genius of Daniel Lee’s Bottega Veneta

By: Alex Marootian

At the height of logomania and luxury streetwear, if someone had said that a new young creative director who was fresh off the heels of a high level position at Celine would reinvigorate an Italian luxury house with neutral suiting and bulbous boots, you would have been told that it would never happen. But flash forward to 2021, and Daniel Lee’s minimalist yet daring approach to Bottega Veneta has re-invigorated a fading brand and is setting many of today's hottest trends. Straight leg tailored pants, double breasted jackets and lug soles are now just as popular on the runway as they are at Zara. Bottega’s lug sole tall chelsea boots have become one of the most popular footwear silhouettes of 2020 and 2021. 

If you went back to 2016 and said that the hottest shoe option is a logoless chunky chelsea boot, you would have been told that chelsea boots are just for Hedi Slimane’s Saint Laurent and that a chunkier silhouette is reserved solely for dad sneakers. Daniel Lee has noticed that people enjoy a more aggressive silhouette, but of course he injected it with a new take on the traditional Chelsea boot. This reimagination of older trends permeates much of Lee’s design style. Oversized t-shirts and denim jackets have been replaced by more relaxed formalwear essentials such as sweaters and blazers. This allows for a market who already prefer a more oversized fit to access formalwear, and to deconstruct it to their liking. Lee has made formalwear more youthful and interesting, rather than stuffy and uncomfortable. The Bottega aesthetic is not restrained by logos or a specific sneaker, fans of the work do not have to be plastered in a Bottega Veneta logo to accurately represent the brand. Someone who appreciates Lee’s design style does not have to resort to knock offs just to wear a certain graphic or logo, something that was much more common during the height of logomania. A neutral suiting option, some chunky boots and a pop of color with a bag or a sweater is all you need. 

Bottega Veneta and Daniel Lee are not just creating new fashion trends, but democratizing luxury fashion for a younger market that may not have the money to shell out $3000 for a coat, but still wants to emulate the Bottega aesthetic. If nothing else, Lee has proven that a successful luxury brand can be minimalist without being boring, and interesting without having to stamp a BV logo on a t-shirt.