Louise Trotter is three collections into her tenure at Bottega Veneta, and the trajectory is becoming clearer. The Bottega Veneta Spring/Summer 2027 collection, presented on September 26 at Milan Fashion Week, marks a noticeable change from the controlled silhouettes and material experimentation that defined her debut in September 2025. After the heavier, more architectural language of her FW26 collection, Trotter has loosened the structure and allowed the clothes to breathe.
Her FW26 collection, presented in February at the brand’s Palazzo San Fedele headquarters, deepened the codes established in her debut. Brutalist references, heavy fabrics pressed into impressions of lightness, and a palette of earthy tones and black gave the collection a settled confidence. SS27 moves differently. The stiff shoulders and busy layering of previous seasons give way to open silhouettes, lighter materials, and a quieter sense of assurance.
Trotter is not introducing herself to Bottega Veneta’s audience anymore. She is beginning to show exactly where she wants the house to go. The collection’s central idea is one of movement and ease, with clothing that feels less concerned with holding its shape and more interested in allowing the wearer to move through it.
The front row at the SS27 show reflected Bottega Veneta’s growing cultural authority under Trotter’s direction. Kendall Jenner and Jacob Elordi, both brand ambassadors, sat alongside Tyler, The Creator, Solange, and Julianne Moore.
Cult supermodel Mariacarla Boscono also walked the show in pleated trousers and a lilac silk top. The collection’s thesis was stated plainly in the show notes: “There is optimism in lightness; in allowing the body, the clothes and perhaps oneself to move more freely. Summer as a proposition: to wear less, but feel more. To leave something open for the air to carry.”
In a season where several major houses leaned into maximalism and noise, Trotter’s response is restrained. The result feels like a collection built around the space between spring and summer, where heavier layers begin to disappear and dressing becomes less about protection and more about movement.
What the Collection Actually Looks Like
The SS27 silhouettes are recognizably Bottega Veneta and recognizably Trotter, but the proportions and materials have been released from the more rigorous architecture of her earlier work. Leather outerwear remains, as do wool trousers and sharply cut blazers, but the ultra-plush fiberglass furs of SS26 and the hairy overcoats of FW26 are gone.
In their place are lighter layers, deconstructed coats, and translucent fabrics that allow the body to register through the clothing rather than being contained by it. One look paired a black trench coat with deconstructed sleeves and shoulders that fully freed the arms. Another saw the collar of a black peacoat transform into a light shoulder wrap on one side, a detail that rewards a second look.
The everyday looks carry some of the collection’s most poetic moments. A lace collar crowns a lived-in tan leather pant with a plain white long-sleeve top. White trousers are paired with a lustrous pearl-colored button-up that merges into a scarf hung around the neck. These are clothes built for a specific kind of life: considered, unhurried, and comfortable in their own skin.
Looser Silhouettes, Lighter Layers
The biggest change in the Bottega Veneta Spring/Summer 2027 collection is not a dramatic break from Trotter’s earlier work. It is the way familiar pieces have been loosened. Outerwear no longer needs to feel protective or heavily constructed, and tailoring has been given more room to move around the body.
That approach is especially visible in the deconstructed coats and jackets. Shoulders are softened, sleeves are opened up, and familiar pieces are manipulated into unexpected forms. The black peacoat with its asymmetrical shoulder wrap is a particularly clear example of Trotter taking a traditional wardrobe staple and removing some of its rigidity.
The result is clothing that feels seasonal without relying on obvious summer tropes. Rather than filling the collection with lightweight basics, Trotter works through proportion, transparency, and movement. The clothes still have structure, but that structure is no longer the first thing the eye notices.
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A Palette That Knows When to Hold Back
Color is handled with similar restraint. Much of the collection stays within Bottega Veneta’s familiar black, white, tan, and neutral territory, allowing the silhouettes and material contrasts to carry much of the visual interest.
Then the brighter shades arrive. A violet blazer is paired with pink satin pants and a purple intrecciato cap, while floral-fringed skirts and dresses introduce movement through their cascading construction. Red and burgundy leather coats and dresses provide some of the collection’s strongest bursts of color.
This balance keeps the collection from becoming too quiet. Trotter understands when to let the clothes recede and when to give them more visual intensity. The color moments feel deliberate rather than decorative, which helps them sit naturally within the broader language of the collection.
Craft, Texture, and What Sets This Season Apart
The craft details in SS27 are where Trotter’s material intelligence is most visible. Crochet appears throughout, introducing a handmade quality that sits in productive tension with the precision of the leather goods and tailoring around it.
Translucent fabrics allow glimpses of the body without exposing it, maintaining the modesty that has always been part of Bottega Veneta’s visual identity while giving the collection a lightness that heavier materials could not achieve. Trotter also doubled the size of the leather and raffia tote bags this season, expanding the accessory range without disrupting the collection’s overall quietness.
The woven leather intrecciato, the house’s most recognizable craft, continues onto a men’s trench coat and women’s high boots. These details prevent the collection’s lighter direction from becoming insubstantial. The materials may be softer and more open, but the technical language remains unmistakably Bottega Veneta.
The Details That Keep Bottega Veneta Grounded
Despite the shift toward lighter dressing, Trotter has not abandoned the elements that make Bottega Veneta immediately recognizable. Leather remains central, tailoring still provides a foundation, and the intrecciato technique continues to appear across the collection.
The difference is in how these elements are handled. Rather than presenting them through the heavy, almost sculptural approach of previous seasons, Trotter lets them interact with softer textures and more relaxed shapes. Crochet, raffia, translucent fabrics, and silk give the harder materials room to breathe.
That contrast gives SS27 much of its character. It is not simply a lighter Bottega Veneta collection. It is a collection about what happens when the house’s established craft codes are placed in a more relaxed environment.
A Collection Built Around the Changing Season
Trotter explained the seasonal logic clearly in her show notes. “Living in Milan makes the passing of seasons particularly felt. Light changes, the city sheds its cloak without becoming bare, and so does the way one lives, moves, dresses. This collection inhabits that movement. Spring anticipating summer. Summer beginning to bloom. One state quietly mutating into another.”
That framing is useful because it explains why the collection does not feel like a departure. It feels like a natural progression, the kind that happens between seasons rather than between creative directors. The clothes are changing because the way people dress changes with the weather.
The idea also gives the collection a sense of continuity. Trotter is not discarding what she established across her first two collections. She is loosening it, making space for a different kind of movement and showing how the Bottega Veneta wardrobe can evolve without losing its identity.
What SS27 Says About Trotter’s Bottega
Trotter joined Bottega Veneta in December 2024, arriving from Lacoste, where she had spent six years rebuilding the brand’s fashion credibility. Her appointment was less expected than some of the names that had been circulating before it was announced, and her first two collections drew critical admiration without generating the kind of loud cultural moment that fashion media tends to reward.
SS27 suggests that quietness is the point rather than a limitation. Trotter is making clothes for people who already know what they want, and what they want is craft, intelligence, and the kind of restraint that takes more skill to execute than maximalism does.
The Bottega Veneta Spring/Summer 2027 collection is the clearest indication yet that Trotter is building toward something durable rather than something reactive. In a fashion moment defined by noise, her Bottega is becoming less about making an entrance and more about establishing a language of its own.
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Check out more pieces from Bottega Venetta’s SpringSummer 2027 collection…
Featured image: Bottega Veneta
