BV SS17_publicity - H 2017
Courtesy of Bottega VenetaWhen Celine’s Phoebe Philo cast prolific writer and ‘60s-era Brentwood style icon Joan Didion, then 80, in the brand’s eyewear campaign in 2015, she opened the doors for several of Didion’s contemporaries to have their own moment in the fashion spotlight.
Since the campaign, “women of a certain age” — including Joni Mitchell (Saint Laurent), Vanessa Redgrave (Gucci), Sofia Loren (Dolce & Gabbana) and Iris Apfel (Alexis Bittar) — have been nabbing luxury fashion campaigns, giving the Hadid-Jenner generation a run for its money. In 73-year-old Lauren Hutton’s case, the actress bridged the generation gap by walking the Bottega Veneta spring 2017 runway arm in arm with 21-year-old Gigi Hadid.
For the brand’s spring campaign, creative director Tomas Maier brought Hutton back to the forefront, casting her alongside Joan Smalls in colorful images that were photographed by Todd Hido in the Modulightor Building in New York — a landmark designed by the late architect Paul Rudolph. (Maier is also an avowed architecture buff.)
The collection celebrates both Bottega Veneta’s 50th anniversary as well as Maier’s 15th anniversary at the helm of the brand (quite the feat in today’s shaky landscape of designer departures). According to a release, the brand celebrated the anniversaries with “a special collection of bags comprised of new styles combined with items from the archive, presented along with the iconic intrecciato clutch worn by Lauren Hutton in the 1980’s movie American Gigolo, which she carried in the show — tiled ‘The Lauren, 1980.'”
