Milan Fashion Week: How far has Daniel Lee bent the rules for his first Bottega Veneta collection?

If the weight of being the most hyped designer of the moment has gone to his head, Bottega Veneta’s creative director, Daniel Lee, wasn’t showing it at his spring/summer 2020 show at Milan Fashion Week.

It has been seven months since the British designer made his debut for the Italian house to huge critical acclaim in February. Before his arrival, the house had been helmed by Tomas Maier for 17 years and had built a strong identity for reliable, if safe, luxury. It was a rule book that Lee respected but rewrote with his first collection. The fashion industry raced to be the first to shoot it, Instagram blew up with adoration for it and waiting lists amassed before product hit the shop floor.

His mechanism for handling such immediate attention and interrogation, he said, is one that many creatives will identify with: he retreated.

“This last year has been intense, I haven’t gotten out much,” he smiled backstage, adding that in the build-up to this outing he has remained quite insular. It was aided by the fact that he doesn’t have Instagram so is sheltered from the hype.

Of course Lee – who previously worked in the design team at Celine – has something on his side that he didn’t have last season: the benefit of hindsight. He knows what his Bottega customer wants because they have been all-consuming of it. Composed and humble in person, the quiet confidence he now possesses showed in this second collection.

Leather, the brand’s unique selling point (USP), dominated throughout, from the first paper-thin asymmetrical dress to the black boiler suits, hooded anoraks and belted trenches, all of which were lightweight, being a spring/summer collection and waterproof. He’s a Brit after all.