Bottega Veneta Spring 2026 Ad Campaign

Review of Bottega Veneta Spring 2026 Ad Campaign by Creative Director Louise Trotter with Photographer Juergen Teller with models Anine Van Velzen, Bai Ruien, Libby Bennett, Liya Kebede, Saul Symon, Sihana Shalaj

Bottega Veneta’s Summer 2026 campaign doesn’t reach for attention—it keeps it, quietly and assuredly. It marks the first under newly appointed creative director Louise Trotter, and it arrives with a tone of quiet conviction. Photographed by Juergen Teller and set against the hushed corridors of Venice, the campaign offers something rarer than novelty: continuity. And in doing so, it subtly shifts the conversation around what it means to inherit a legacy—especially one as carefully constructed as Bottega’s.

The question here isn’t how different Trotter is from Matthieu Blazy, but how closely she’s listening. Rather than disrupt the rhythm of her predecessor’s visual world, she leans into it, matching its tempo while introducing her own notes—with small changes in inflection, texture, and tone. Teller’s photography, with its trademark candor and unfiltered light, preserves the immediacy that defined Bottega’s recent campaigns. But this time, there’s a gentler lyricism in the framing, a softening of edges that lets the clothes breathe within their surroundings.

Venice, of course, is never neutral. It’s a city heavy with memory and aesthetics, one that risks overpowering any attempt at subtlety. But the campaign’s great strength lies in how lightly it treads—how it allows the locations to act as echoes rather than declarations. We glimpse a flower shop at the foot of a palazzo, an auditorium warmed by the sheen of carved wood, crown moldings and painted panels, all rendered with a casual elegance that never demands attention. These aren’t backdrops so much as parallel characters, chosen not for spectacle but for resonance. The campaign finds something closer to symbiosis than symbolism—Italian-ness not as postcard but as lived texture.

This restraint also serves the clothes. A glinting coat catches the eye, yes, but its purpose is to draw us further in—to the fit of a trouser, the slope of a shoulder, the structure of a suit that appears almost incidental until it’s not. Trotter seems keenly aware of this push and pull. She knows that quiet design can still hold tension. The tailoring invites inspection. The details, while rarely flamboyant, reward a second look.

The press notes gesture toward figures like Peggy Guggenheim and Truman Capote, citing them as cultural ghosts of Venice. If their presence feels more gestural than literal, perhaps that’s the point. What’s evoked here isn’t biographical homage, but the suggestion of their sensibility—a reverence for art, a cultivated eccentricity, a sense of aesthetic conviction that doesn’t need to explain itself. In this light, the campaign becomes less about individual reference points and more about creating a kind of atmosphere, one that is both cerebral and instinctive.

Trotter doesn’t feel like she’s arriving mid-sentence—she feels like the person this sentence was written for. In both the collection and its visual treatment, there’s already a rare clarity of purpose. Her understanding of the house’s deeper codes—the ethos of artistry, the belief in methodical, cerebral craft—feels not just respectful, but generative. This campaign doesn’t search for a new direction; it confirms one. And in doing so, it signals something increasingly rare in today’s luxury space: a handover that deepens identity rather than diluting it.

Which raises a broader question worth watching: as so many houses race to define themselves in louder, quicker, more disruptive terms, what does it mean to move forward by listening closely—to history, to place, to materials, and to the quiet logic already at work?