When most people loudly proclaim that they’re quitting Instagram for good, it’s met with rolled eyes and sighs of derision. “It’s just getting a bit too much”, says the Close Friends Story of a girl you met in a club toilet nine months ago. “I just need to get back to ME.” So when Bottega Veneta did the same in January 2021 – then under the creative control of Daniel Lee – most assumed they’d be back in a flash. But Bottega Veneta isn’t like most girls.
When it checked out of the infinite doom scroll, the label launched a series of zines featuring the likes of Missy Elliott in electric blue braids, or the dark and messy work of Joshua Gordon. The zines then continued into Matthieu Blazy’s era, with the designer crafting his very own version completely dedicated to Kate Moss. Now, Bottega’s aversion to Instagram is going strong, and the project returns for its fourth instalment, a new fanzine that explores the creative process behind its SS24 collection.
The collection, one that debuted in Milan last September, was inspired by the spirit of adventure and global travel, and that motif continues to permeate this season’s zine. There’s sketches of the collection, a travel notebook for readers to scribble into, and BTS images from photographer Alec Soth, who shot the SS24 campaign in playgrounds across Tokyo. Soth, known for his “on the road” style approach to photography, said that working with Blazy was “the stuff of dreams” and that, “the playgrounds felt like a metaphor for Matthieu’s imagination.”
All four volumes of the zine will come in a case embossed with the same whimsical map that covered the floor at the Milan show. Of the cartography-coded new release, Blazy said that “SS24 is an Odyssey… the fanzine allows any reader, anywhere, to join that journey, and to imagine and record their own escapes and adventures – whether in the world, or their creativity.”
Bottega Veneta’s Summer 24 fanzine is available in all Bottega Veneta stores, plus Climax, Claire de Rouen, and the ICA bookstore in London.
