Milan Fashion Week: 10 Best Looks From Bottega Veneta Fall 2016

All the best looks from MFW FW16

By Annabelle Fernandez - published 28 Feb 2016

Tomas Maier took a step back from the arty-architectural tricks of seasons past and showed a Bottega Veneta collection that was BV at its best: luxurious, understated, adult, desirable. Sometimes in the glamour and drama which inspires us, the art of wearing clothes gets lost. When clothes are so effortless they serve to highlight, not overshadow, the woman wearing them...job well done.

Bottega Veneta's fall collection revolved around the fundamentals of a woman's wardrobe: trousers (done long and fluid); coats, shown belted or knee-length; cinched day dresses, subtle cocktail versions, and best in show, the knit sweater-and-pleated skirt combinations. Within these handful of looks, Maier offered plenty of variety via leather, double-faced cashmere, and printed intarsia knits.

The sweater-skirt sets could have felt retro, but they didn't thanks to interesting colour and print mixes, like his reddish tones, which were a nod to Mount Vesuvius of all places. And with every look, of course, came those Bottega leather bags. This season, as muted as the overall collection was, the bags came in bright purple, green, red and yellow crocodile exotics. Their envelope, shoulder and double-bag silhouettes were more petite than in the past. Maier also blew the dust off an archival style from 1971.

Evening carried through the idea of subtlety with the same cinched silhouette rendered in a slightly sheer dress sprinkled with micro sequins and built-in tonal bras. It was all covered up though, by a sequinned plaid coat. Again, Maier was firmly grounded this season and wanted his customer to have something she could look at and say, "I could realistically wear that."

His final set of dresses were a study in the charm of simplicity—a group of belted pleated knits with a built-in bra and a belted waist. It's an age-old hourglass silhouette that Maier cannily relaxed, allowing the knit to weigh the skirt down a bit, creating a longer, leaner line that was ultra flattering and uber sexy.

From: Harper's BAZAAR US