…to Bottega Veneta! What a trajectory for the quiet British designer

Louise Trotter at her last presentation for the house of Carven. Photo illustration: Just So

What musical chairs! Just after it was announced that Matthieu Blazy will be going to Chanel, Kering confirmed their new hire for Bottega Veneta. It has been strongly rumoured at least since last week that Louis Trotter would be leaving for BV. And then came the news that she will be exiting Carven (come January), where she joined just last year and made quite a mark with three major collections, strong on silhouettes and technical manipulation of form. Her appointment to BV is surprising only because we did not expect her tenure at Carven to be so brief (but the French house, now owned by the Chinese company Icicle, is not known for being able to keep their designers—the longest being Pascal Millet for six years, only a year longer than Guillaume Henry, frequently credited for reviving the brand). Given her design finesse, Ms Trotter would be a right fit for BV.

In a statement released by Kering, BV’s CEO Leo Rongone said: “I am pleased to welcome Louise as our new Creative Director. Her aesthetic seamlessly combines exquisite design with sublime craft and her commitment to cultural advocacy aligns beautifully with our brand vision. Through her sophisticated lens, Bottega Veneta will continue to celebrate its heritage while preserving modern relevance.” Very few welcome notes capture a designer’s skills so accurately. Indeed, if she was able to do what she did at a tres petite maison that is Carven, she will likely excel at the home of the intrecciato leather and build upon the regrettably truncated legacy of her predecessor. With a career that’s been going up and up, albeit slowly, Ms Trotter brings to BV a wealth of experience and a sophisticated eye for cut and surface treatment that is not reliant on embellishments.

With a career that’s been going up and up, Ms Trotter brings to BV a wealth of experience and a sophisticated eye for cut and surface treatment that is not reliant on embellishments

Kering surely appreciates her commercial sense, having worked at high street labels Jigsaw and Whistles, and even the American brand Gap that Kanye West could not, however hard he tried, elevate. Her first notable appointment since graduating Newcastle University in fashion design was at the British retailer Joseph in 2009, where she produced extremely well-engineered clothes for 9 years—a good part of it we were able to buy here in 2015 until they closed their only store a few years later—and even introduced craft elements in her designs before it was trending. Then she moved to Paris to join Lacoste, taking over Felipe Oliveira Baptista (who filled the post vacated by Christophe Lemaire—the first designer to truly make Lacoste cool, if tennis clothes needed to be so). At Lacoste, Ms Trotter made sportswear fun, while keeping to tweaking the classics for her contemporary audience. But it was at Carven that she showed she could be a laudable RTW designer, putting out intriguing shapes and the compelling asymmetry not restricted to left/right configuration, but also front/rear, or top/bottom .

We have been following Ms Trotter since her Joseph days, and she has been gathering not just momentum, but strength as she worked rather quietly away. When once we thought she could be the next Phoebe Philo, we are, at this moment, certain she is better than the present Ms Philo. As one SOTD reader commented to us upon hearing the new BV appointment, “Phoebe seems to have lost the magic. There is no wow factor [in her clothes] anymore.” Either that, or we have become jelak of her variations-of-the-past, androgynous looks (admittedly, the no-runway-show approach could be detrimental to her brand). It is possible that during her hiatus, we have, aesthetically, moved on. Nostalgia is not always useful when there is hunger for the next excitable thing. Sometimes when you missed the boat, you really would be left ashore. For Louis Trotter, the schooner has just pulled in. And the wind is in the sails.