Stepping into the Bottega Veneta showspace on Saturday evening (21 September 2024), it took a moment for your eyes to adjust to quite what you were looking at. In lieu of the usual rows of benches, stools or bistro chairs that one might usually find at a fashion show were instead 460 animal-shaped beanbags for guests to sit on, a surreal menagerie that creative director said hoped would evoke a feeling of childhood wonder – a mood which continued through the fantastical collection itself. ‘I was interested in the power of “wow”,’ said the French-Belgian designer after the show.
Comprising fifteen different animals in total – mine was a black dog, though there were also bunnies, killer whales, foxes and otters – each chair was crafted from leather and based on the Sacco easy chair, an icon of Italian design created by Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini and Franco Teodoro for Zanotta in 1968. Blazy said the inspiration in part came from a scene in Steven Spielberg’s E.T., whereby the extraterrestrial hides in a closet amid a pile of colourful soft toys. ‘[With this collection] I started to see it like a kid. In a kid’s world everything is possible,’ he said. ‘You can really approach reality in a different way.’
