At Bottega Veneta Fall 2026, Clothes Are a Statement of Womanly Power

At her Bottega Veneta debut last season, designer Louise Trotter wowed the industry with what was one of the biggest shows of the season. The clothes were powerful, assertively feminine, and incredibly inventive—who could forget the swaying recycled fiberglass skirts and sweaters that mimicked the look and feel of fur?

Last night at the Bottega headquarters in Palazzo San Fedele in Milan, Trotter leaned all the way into this seductive vision. The show notes introduced the collection as a statement on “the dialogue between brutalism and sensuality.” The first looks were all brutalism. Coating was exaggerated, with widened shoulders as well as hips. This isn’t a reference to 1980s power dressing, when women took on a man’s silhouette as they entered the workforce; this shape is very much a woman’s. Garments, in cold blacks and grays, held all the imposing and harsh utility of Milan’s dominant architecture style. They felt like statements of womanly power and cocoons all at once, shells to protect the body and our hidden interiority while we take on the world.

Slim-cut men’s leather micro-intrecciato trenches were slick and assured. Liya Kebede wore an oversize sculpted tunic and trousers; she seemed to be stifling a smile through her entire walk. (What could be a better cosign?) Huge suiting took on the shapes of a woman’s curves. As the show progressed, the materials became surprising and curious. Fiberglass popped up again. A crimson red set sparkled. Silk-thread minidresses took on a shearling-like quality, threaded to parrot lamb’s fur.

The most exciting element of the collection was the outerwear. Midway through the show, one jaw-dropping coat after another appeared. A shearling coat, brushed to look like fox fur, made a nod to Margot Tenenbaum. A wild, fiberglass black-and-white coat felt suited for Cruella (she can finally abandon the hunt). Some of the fiberglass garments felt like siblings to Nick Cave’s Soundsuits—those colorful, synthetic-hair costumes the artist dons as a symbol of protection and vulnerability. Trotter’s offering is an embrace of power and care, a statement on the structures we create for safety and self-expression.

“This collection is dedicated to the expression of the collective: the wondrous collaboration between the heart, the mind and the hand,” offered the Bottega team. How wondrous it is.