Bottega Veneta Cements the Return of the Massive Shoulder Bag for Spring 2024

Statement-making bags, highly detailed essentials reworked, and a laser focus on turning the everyday into the unexpected: these are a few of Matthieu Blazy’s favorite things. And for Bottega Veneta’s spring 2024 show, the creative director showed us all that—in spades.

There were boxy shirts with leather ties; asymmetric wrap skirts and matching tops in shades of brilliant, electrifying orange; washed-out chevron print skirts, and coats that sprang to life with plumes of fringe. In past seasons, Blazy gave us hyperrealistic leather pieces that looked like an average pair of jeans or a white tank top. Therein lies his genius: upping the ante on wardrobe staples and reinventing them with a smart and surreal, yet approachable eye.

Ever the master of texture, chunky woven knits were some of the most luscious pieces of the collection alongside leather dresses with oversize, contrasting fringe. Textural dresses were made of approachable khakis. Supple-looking striped leathers combined for a visual fantasia of very expensive-looking dresses. Seafoam greens, cantaloupe melon hues, and burgundies provided a complex color palette. Before joining Bottega Veneta as creative director in 2021, Blazy spent time behind the scenes at Margiela Couture, Phoebe Philo’s Céline, and then at Calvin Klein. His collections often represent an aesthetic junction between those worlds, without an overly referential feeling.

Bottega Veneta made its new point of view on accessories crystal clear for spring: if you thought big bags represented the antithesis of luxury (à la Succession), you’d be wrong. The label is setting its sights on sumptuous totes in neutral hues, worn-in backpacks, and absolutely massive shoulder bags. The coed collection included plenty of new bags to lust over as well, like a robin’s egg blue Intreccio briefcase, fringed top-handle bags in shades of tangerine, and new takes on the recently introduced intrecciato-leather Sardine bag. To give the wearable collection more of a real-world feel, some of the models were styled with books and newspapers. In one of the supersized bags, a model carried a rolled-up tube of paper. Was it a floor plan? A piece of art? Who knows. Either way, this kind of styling provided core storytelling for the collection—and of Blazy’s new Bottega Veneta world. It’s artistic, but still down to earth.