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In a shift that stunned the fashion planet, and less than a month immediately after keeping a much-ballyhooed show in Detroit just before an audience that provided Mary J. Blige, Lil’ Kim and Kehlani, Bottega Veneta, the Italian luxury manufacturer known for its signature intrecciato weave, announced it was parting techniques with its inventive director, Daniel Lee.
Mr. Lee, 35, who begun at Bottega as a relative unidentified, experienced been at the brand for just in excess of three decades, however in that time he was credited with reviving the formerly staid residence and giving it a coolly present-day veneer. Which created it, of system, very hot.
The information arrived hours in advance of the Council of Manner Designers of The us awards, the place Mr. Lee, who is British, experienced been nominated in two categories: intercontinental women’s have on designer of the year and global men’s use designer of the 12 months, and two weeks prior to the Trend Awards in London, where by Mr. Lee experienced been nominated as designer of the year.
In a assertion, François-Henri Pinault, the chief executive of Kering, the luxury team that owns Bottega Veneta, thanked Mr. Lee for “the exceptional chapter” he wrote in the brand’s background.
“His singular vision made the house’s heritage related for today and place it back to the middle of the trend scene,” Mr. Pinault mentioned.
In 2019, Mr. Lee won 4 awards at the British Fashion Awards for his turnaround, together with designer of the calendar year and manufacturer of the year — additional than any other designer experienced taken dwelling in one night time in the record of the event, together with Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney. His pouch bag, released not prolonged immediately after he joined Bottega, was a runaway strike, as have been his sq.-toe woven pumps.
In fact, Mr. Lee launched this kind of a obvious identity for the manufacturer — one created on a selected form of rigorously contemporary engineering — that a tangy, saturated shade of lime eco-friendly became recognised as “Bottega green” pretty much overnight. (A notable accomplishment presented how a lot of many years it took Tiffany to have its signature blue, or Christian Louboutin to lay claim to red soles.)
Only very last month, Kering — which also owns Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Balenciaga, between other models — noted revenues of 363.4 million euros (around $417.73 million) in the third quarter, a growth of 9.3 per cent about 2020.
This regardless of the point that at the commencing of 2021, Mr. Lee took the counterintuitive phase of wiping Bottega Veneta’s social media accounts clean. That shift adopted his earlier conclusion, in the course of the pandemic, to eschew the wider style week calendar, opting as a substitute to rename his dual-gender reveals Salon 1 and Salon 2 (Detroit marked Salon 3) and hold them in which and when he noticed healthy.
In the information release Kering did not say when Mr. Lee would formally depart his work, or who would exchange him, while it did characterize the parting as a “joint final decision.” If so, it arrived as a shock to most of the vogue environment, an industry where designer adjust is typically rumored extended before it takes place (typically even if it does not arise) and in which designer-brand stress commonly arises when profits slide (or really do not consider off in the initially put) or mutual unhappiness starts off to leak — neither of which appeared to be the case at Bottega, irrespective of a large level of employees churn. In truth, Mr. Lee’s task experienced been regarded as mostly safe. In Detroit, just after his recent display, he had been pretty much bouncing on his toes with enjoyment.
“Gobsmacked!” claimed Ken Downing, the chief resourceful officer of Triple Throughout the world, the firm at the rear of the American Aspiration shopping mall in New Jersey. “The information of Daniel Lee leaving Bottega Veneta is stunning and unpredicted, to say the minimum.”
Luca Solca, the senior luxury analyst at Bernstein, also named the news “unexpected,” and reported it was “bad news for Kering.”
“Daniel has been able to reinvent intrecciato for Bottega Veneta and to bring it again to shopper relevance rapidly,” Mr. Solca explained.
Lisa Marie Fernandez, the designer, tweeted, “Oh wow … There won’t be any brands still left that women of all ages can in fact acquire and dress in any longer.”
When rumors may possibly not have preceded Mr. Lee’s departure, it did not get lengthy immediately after the news broke for new whispers to start off, which includes that most likely Mr. Lee’s exit was similar to the return of the designer Phoebe Philo, for whom Mr. Lee experienced worked when she was artistic director of Celine. Or that probably he had uncovered a backer for his have brand name — though he had under no circumstances expressed a desire to start a namesake line.
No matter if or not that is correct, the abrupt nature of the parting, as nicely as the fact that no information and facts has been shared about what the designer or his former brand name ideas to do next, is certain to give increase at the time again to speculation about creative vs . company ability. Not to mention kick-start off the frenzied fashion activity of designer musical chairs, which appeared to have briefly (fortunately) slowed down through the pandemic.
Neither Mr. Lee nor anyone at Kering was available for remark.
