Bottega Veneta latest Resort 2024 collection, titled Summer Solstice, turns the fiery season into a feeling — one that’s all about touch.

Clothes rarely possess the ability to make us feel. Besides its most basic purpose, to shelter our bodies, protect our soles and project our innermost personalities, its design-by-nature certainly lacks the power to address complex emotions. Yet, that hasn’t been the case at Bottega Veneta. Recently, there’s been a sense of wanderlust brewing at the house, where we’ve witnessed a feeling of youthful naivety, that yearning to grasp the world, permeating across its recent new releases.

These emotional narratives first came into view with the Summer 2024 collection before appearing once more in its Resort 2024, where Matthieu Blazy turned to travel to chronicle the house’s next visual identity. Filled with nostalgia, hopefulness and melancholy, its straightforward ensembles of clothing seemed to carry an overwhelming bittersweet sensation. But how could pieces of shirts, dresses and oversized bags conjure such a human response? According to Blazy, one can be touched by touch — or in simpler speak, textures can also aid in embodying a lot of our human emotions. Thus, the artistic director has found a way to weave emotions simply by the use of materials we can feel with touch. 

The next instalment, otherwise known as Summer Solstice, embodies the same ideals. New mixed medium denim and blue-toned leather intrecciato weave on its Hop, Cabat, and Cobble bags captures the midnight sky reflecting on the ocean — a contrast in textures that helps create an otherworldly experience. Lucid beach towels are woven with patterns of fish aids in heightening one’s senses, and a newspaper-printed pouch that scrunches just like paper aids in creating the travel illusion. Its theme is also fitting, considering Resort collections were traditionally considered a house’s annual vacation offerings.

Plus, there’s no better way to understand this than to touch the Bottega Veneta Resort 2024 collection yourself. The house has set up pop-up locations for the new collection in iconoclast, idyllic destinations such as in Palm Beach, Miami and Phuket, Thailand.

Once you are done with this story, click here to catch up with our May 2024 issue.