Bottega Veneta runway show in Detroit draws stars, insiders to Motor City

Detroit was star studded Thursday night as celebrities filled the downtown streets for the luxury brand Bottega Veneta's spring runway show.

Inspired by the city's techno roots and American innovation, the Italian brand's creative director, Daniel Lee, brought local and international celebrities for the show at Detroit's Michigan Building Theater.

"I was obsessed with showing here," Lee told reporters, according to a GQ report. “Detroit really was the beginning” of the collection, he said - the concept from which the clothing emerged was an unforgettable moment. I love America. "

Thursday's show, the Bottega Salon O3 Show, is the brand's third seasonally independent double gender show, with the first in London and the second in Berlin, reports the New York Times.

Driven by the "greatness of this city," Lee took the show straight to the source of his inspiration rather than just naming it. His first trip to Detroit was an accidental day-long affair due to a delayed flight to Jamaica. He took reporters on a microtour of the sounds and life of Detroit.

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According to GQ, reporters and editors were taken to the W. Hawkins Ferry House in Grosse Pointe Shores, "a remarkable Walter Gropius-esque box with a corkscrew staircase from the 1960s." Then they went to the studio of the furniture artist Chris Schanck, who is showing a work in the Bottega pop-up in Detroit in which women in hijabs apply pink foil to pieces of hard foam.

The next stop was the almost invisible Exhibit 3000, a techno museum on Grand Boulevard that is located in the Underground Resistance studio. The collective was founded in the late 1980s by producers Jeff Mills and "Mad" Mike Banks and was known for its socially conscious message.

There, DJ John “Jammin” Collins described the journey of how four Detroiters, according to GQ, combined a political awareness of the city's decline with a passion for Afrofuturism and house music to create the genre.

The mini tour formed the framework for the show.

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The pieces were a reinterpretation of American sportswear and workwear - parkas, sneakers and tennis dresses among the 55 ready-to-wear looks - and were made from fine fabrics. The soundtrack from Moodymann, a Detroit-based techno giant, further changed the space.

The crowd was a mix of local and international celebrities, with Mary J. Blige, Lil Kim and Kehlani in the front row.

After the show, a small group was brought to the Magic Stick for an afterparty with a soundtrack and lighting by Detroit's DJ Carl Craig.

The decision to bring the show to Detroit, however, has been questioned by reporters and local residents alike, despite Lee's attempts to give a full picture of the line's inspiration.

The tour, with a stop in Grosse Pointe Shores, one of the state's richest cities, illustrates the frustration of some Detroiters at the tendency of outsiders to parachute and believe they understand the conditions of the city.

Regarding the Bottega pop-up shop, The New York Times' Vanessa Friedman acknowledges the irony and writes, "Even when skydiving into a city that has faced many financial struggles with bells and whistles and bags selling for thousands, may seem a little out of place. "

When GQ fashion critic Rachel Tashjian met someone outside of the afterparty, they told Tashjian they wished there had been more Detroit models on the show.

"They were locals, and I asked them how Bottega discovered them: That was exactly the kind of person, I thought, whose interest and fandom had brought Bottega to his righteous place," writes Tashjian. "'Oh, they didn't - I snuck in,' they said, pointing to the scene to indicate that this was their birthright."

But Lee said his inspiration came from a connection with his home, Leeds.

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"I'm obsessed with Detroit," Lee said after a report by Vogue Runway after the show. “I'm from Leeds; it's the industrial heartland of Britain and Detroit is the industrial heartland of America, I feel that kind of connection.

“Detroit is really the birthplace of techno, and techno was the music I grew up with and went to. I wanted to use my position to shed light on all of that. "

mmarini@gannett.com

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