Last December, the Italian fashion house Bottega Veneta announced Louise Trotter, an English designer, as the brand’s new creative director. Her first collection debuted at Milan Fashion Week in late September, one of many new designers launching collections for the spring/summer season.
Trotter’s show was held at Fabbrica Orobia, a former zinc factory in the center of Milan. The show’s soundtrack was created by Steve McQueen, an art world crossover figure not usually associated with the world of high fashion. Depending on who you ask, McQueen will be better known as a 1999 Turner Prize-winning artist, the Tate Museum’s prestigious award, for his video work, or an Oscar-winning film director for 12 Years a Slave, which took home Best Picture in 2014.
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McQueen’s contribution to the show’s soundtrack pairs vocal recordings by David Bowie and Nina Simone of the song “Wild is the Wind,” written in 1957 and famously recorded by many artists over the years, among them, Cat Power, Esperanza Spalding, and Barbra Streisand. The title of McQueen’s sound piece—’66 – ’76—refers to the years that Simone’s and Bowie’s versions were recorded.
“I wanted to heighten people’s emotions, to make them more sensitive to the clothes,” McQueen told Bottege Veneta. “When I’ve been to fashion shows, I always think, this is the contemporary incarnation of opera, as it would have been experienced in the past. It’s not old-fashioned, it’s not dusty. In fact, it’s cutting-edge.”
Given McQueen’s recent work in the artworld, creating a sound piece is not so unexpected. Last spring, his installation at Dia:Beacon, Bass, didn’t include any video components at all; rather 60 lightboxes hanging from the ceiling and a nearly 3-hour recording of music by five musicians.
McQueen attended the show with his daughter Alex. Both wore the brand’s trademark leather Intrecciato: an olive green trench coat for McQueen, and a black V-neck dress for his daughter.
