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The row of playful animal bean bags at Bottega Veneta’s Spring/Summer 2025 show in Milan set a tongue-in-cheek tone for a masterful collection from creative director Matthieu Blazy. That two of those bean bags — a rabbit and a chicken, respective symbols of good luck and good fortune — now sit at the entrance to CEO Bartolomeo Rongone’s office says a lot about the consistency of viewpoint that underlies Bottega’s current success.
I’m here to discuss Bottega’s launch into fragrance. The new collection of five scents was conceived by Blazy and is deliberately high end. The translucent glass bottle is a nod to the lagoon of Venice and to the Murano glass-blowing tradition; the cradle of the brand being the Veneto region. The bottle sits on a base of green verde alpi marble and carries a €390 price tag (€280 for the refill). Distribution is being tightly controlled: the collection launched on 2 October in approximately 100 Bottega Veneta boutiques around the world — a third of the house’s store network — and in a small selection of wholesale stockists.
Rongone calls the fragrances “the expression of the brand”, which is synonymous with cross-cultural influences symbolised by the house’s signature leather weave, the intrecciato. The fragrances are an “olfactory intrecciato”, according to the brand, featuring natural ingredients from different continents.
“It’s a way to complement our brand — that’s why it’s important that we keep this exclusivity even in terms of distribution,” Rongone tells Vogue Business during an interview in the reception room next to his office, in the maison’s HQ on Milan’s Via Privata Ercole Marelli. The space is filled with artwork, art books and Italian design pieces, including a Brionvega radio. He invites me to sit on a vintage ’70s sofa and offers a glass of cold-pressed juice.
Such a luxury positioning for the fragrance is quite a statement for Kering Beauté, the new division launched in early 2023 to develop the beauty category for several of the group’s brands, including Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga and Alexander McQueen. This first launch for Kering Beauté was celebrated with a lavish dinner on Wednesday night at Bottega Veneta’s new private residence for top customers housed within a 15th century Venetian palazzo, attended by brand ambassador Jacob Elordi, actor and producer Sigourney Weaver and Kering chief François-Henri Pinault.
After launching initially in EMEA, the US, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Taiwan and Australia, distribution will roll out gradually. “Every three to six months we’re going to extend the network, still being focused on our doors first. For sure the first extension will be towards Asia,” Rongone says.
Bottega Veneta has proved fairly resilient in the luxury downturn. Wealthy customers love the €9,300 Tosca handbag and the €8,400 nappa leather dress. Its ultra-luxury positioning is an asset in an environment where high-net-worth individuals are holding up well, while aspirational customers remain affected by the economy. “Ready-to-wear sells very well and appeals strongly to our best clients,” says Richard Johnson, chief commercial and sustainability officer at luxury multi-brand retailer Mytheresa.
Sales were €1.64 billion in 2023, and €836 million in the first half of 2024, up 3 per cent compared with the first half of 2023. This is muted compared to ultra-luxury peers like Hermès; nonetheless growth is no mean feat in today’s environment. Bottega Veneta is the top-performing brand among Kering’s fashion houses — a relief given the group’s largest brand, Gucci, is in turnaround mode. Can Bottega Veneta become Kering’s newest growth engine?
“Bottega Veneta is one of the hottest brands at the moment,” says Mario Ortelli, managing director of luxury brand advisory Ortelli Co. He adds that Rongone now has the challenge of translating Bottega’s traction into even faster sales momentum, from a merchandising, product extension and distribution perspective.
Sustaining Bottega’s brand value for the long term
Bottega Veneta has invested in client activations, communications, the new VIC (very important client) residence within the palazzo and a new store concept (Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II and Paris’s Avenue Montaigne), which has dented profitability. “All of these had an impact on profitability in the short term, but for sure are sustaining the brand value in the medium to long term,” Kering deputy CEO Francesca Bellettini told analysts during the Kering first-half earnings in July. EBIT margin was 14.5 per cent in the first half of 2024.
Rongone says: “Profitability is a matter of where you invest. We are giving a lot of our money back to our clients in the sense of the experience, in the joy, in genuineness. Of course, we are becoming more profitable, sales wise successful, but it’s just a consequence of what we’re doing. We’re not only proud of what we do, but of the way we do it.”
The SS25 show was a hit, highlighting Bottega’s celebrity pulling power and marketing savvy. Guests seen lounging on those bean bags (which were inspired by the Zanotta Sacco chair) included Elordi, Julianne Moore, A$AP Rocky, Michelle Yeoh, TikTok star Jools Lebron, whose ‘demure’ video went viral this summer, and Imane Khelif, the Algerian boxer whose eligibility to compete in the women’s category at the Olympics was questioned by online trolls. Rihanna turned out for the after-party.
Blazy sent out a playful collection that included animal references like the fish, deliberately creased pieces (“Conventional grown-up allure and sophistication are undone,” according to the show notes), striped shirting, as well as material experimentation, like the fluid, all-leather paillette evening dress. “In his two and a half years at the label, Blazy has turned Bottega Veneta into the show of Milan Fashion Week,” wrote Vogue Runway and Vogue Business global director Nicole Phelps.
The show was all the more remarkable in an otherwise rather safe season. Many designers hoped commercial collections would help them ride out the storm, Mytheresa’s Johnson says. “However this instinct is flawed as customers continue to turn to what’s new and exciting, so it was houses like Bottega Veneta, Saint Laurent and Loewe that really stood out and inspired with fresh new creativity.”
“We are happy with the results of the show. It’s a period that is extremely positive to us,” Rongone says.
VICs and brand extensions
Pampering top customers and attracting younger ones is part of the strategy. After opening the private residence in Venice, the house is going to open another on New York’s Madison Avenue in November, Rongone reveals. “In that space, we create encounters. Our first store was not in Veneto, not even in Italy. Our first store was opened in New York in 1972.”
Since Rongone took on the role in 2019, the brand has also been able to attract a younger audience. “Up to probably five to six years ago, Bottega was extremely relevant for very mature clients. What I believe changed in the last five years has been the dialogue,” he says. “There are actions and cultural advocacy, which is to me the door that has been open to the younger clientele. Imagine what we’ve done in a digital era when everybody is really focused on digital: we relaunched physical magazines like [iconic magazine for gay men] Butt, helped to launch new magazines like [art journal] Magma and supported the Strand bookshop in New York [producing a limited-edition tote bag for the store].”
This shift towards a younger audience has been achieved without an Instagram or a TikTok account. The brand erased its Instagram account in early 2021, under previous creative director Daniel Lee. Blazy was promoted to the role late 2021, but didn’t bring the account back. Instead, there’s a flurry of fan accounts like @newbottega who curate their pages independently, according to the brand. “It’s not: ‘Let’s avoid social media so they’re going to talk about us.’ Not at all,” says Rongone. “It’s much more genuine than this and nobody says that we can’t come back tomorrow to any of this. But it’s also true that our creativity often matches perfectly with other channels.”
Rongone points to a photograph on the wall in his office; the father’s day campaign starring A$AP Rocky and his children. “When you have this image in front of you, you realise that the meaning of that image is way more solid than the one you can have in just scrolling a page.”
More category extensions
Bottega is also looking at further brand extensions. A fine jewellery collection — the first ever for the brand — will follow the fragrance launch in November, with a price range in the €50,000 to €100,000 ballpark. It’s already available for pre-see at the palazzo for VICs.
At the moment, handbags (including the bestselling Andiamo bag) represent 50 per cent of the business, while other categories including ready-to-wear, shoes and jewellery make up the rest. “It’s very likely that breakdown is going to change simply because we’re introducing new categories. That’s mathematical,” says Rongone. “All categories are growing, in particular, ready-to-wear, shoes, bags, but also jewellery and new objects [candles, home objects, etc.] that we launched in May are booming. This will decrease the percentage of the leather goods but it’s not an intention.”
The bean bag chairs became available on the brand website immediately after the show. “We have requests from VICs and VIPs. Most of the people present at the show want to have their own or multiple. It’s a very nice reaction from the market and then we’ll have another moment not that far from now. It’s going to be in Miami [during Art Basel], and then there is going to be a third moment in stores.”
Rongone declined to share a sales target for the house. “We have a single target for Bottega, which is to become the most desirable brand in the world. This was in the intention of the founders: to become the most sophisticated, desirable, luxury brand in the world. And this is our intention.”
How long does it take to get to the top of the luxury pyramid? “We feel we are already at the very top. But our very top doesn’t have any limit.”
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