Louise Trotter Doubled Down on Colour and Oversized Bags for Her Latest Bottega Veneta Show in Milan

Louise Trotter presented her latest collection for Bottega Veneta at Milan Fashion Week on Saturday, expanding on the brutalism and sensuality theme she has built her tenure at the house around and pushing further into colour and scale than her earlier shows for the brand. A wire report on the show describes the British designer doubling the size of her signature leather and raffia tote bags and working yellow, red and purple hues along with floral prints into suits and dresses kept deliberately structured yet light.

Callas and Pasolini, again

Trotter has returned repeatedly to Maria Callas and Pier Paolo Pasolini as reference points since arriving at Bottega Veneta, describing the pairing in earlier interviews as feminine and masculine guiding lights, Callas for her emotional clarity and Pasolini for the tension he found between beauty and realism. Numero's review of an earlier outing in the same design arc frames that dialogue between brutalism and sensuality as the organising idea Trotter has kept returning to across her collections for the house, threading it through fabric choices as much as silhouette.

Woven leather, on more than just bags

The house's signature Intrecciato weave, traditionally associated with its handbags, appeared this season on a trench coat cut for men and on tall boots for women, a continuation of Trotter's pattern of moving the technique across categories rather than keeping it confined to accessories. The bags themselves, already one of the most photographed items to come out of her tenure, grew noticeably larger this season, a scale shift the reporting on the show treats as a deliberate statement rather than an incidental styling choice.

A front row built for attention

Singer Solange and rapper Tyler The Creator attended the show alongside brand ambassadors Julianne Moore and Jacob Elordi, with a member of the Jenner family closing the presentation in a voluminous black dress, the kind of celebrity heavy front row that has become standard for a handful of Milan's most closely watched shows each season. For Bottega Veneta, the combination of a growing, more colourful handbag silhouette and a guest list built to travel well on social media points to a house still leaning hard into visibility as it works to keep Trotter's version of the brand in the conversation a year into her tenure.