For Bottega Veneta, craft has never just been about making things. It’s about saying something—quietly, but with a whole lot of intention. This season, the house is marking 50 years of its iconic Intrecciato weave with Craft is our Language, a new campaign that transforms hand gestures into a full-blown conversation.
Lensed by Jack Davison and choreographed by Lenio Kaklea, the campaign zooms in on the hands themselves—how they move, how they speak, and how they’ve always been a language in their own right. The result? A series of portraits and short films that feel intimate, poetic, and refreshingly human.
Of course, the Intrecciato is the main star here. Introduced in 1975, the famed signature weave—more than a design flourish—is a hallmark of the Italian brand’s core belief in collaboration, quiet luxury, and the kind of craft that doesn’t need a logo to be recognised. Woven by hand from thin leather strips called fettucce, the process takes hours (sometimes days), and it still happens inside the house’s ateliers in Veneto.
And in place of a nostalgic moodboard, we get a living, breathing dictionary of 50 gestures—some inspired by the Intrecciato itself, others pulled from everyday expressions that transcend borders and time.
The cast is stacked—and that’s not hyperbole. The full lineup reads like a melting pot of creatives across disciplines and generations: Edward Buchanan, Thanaerng Kanyawee Songmuang, Vicky Krieps, Julianne Moore, Shu Qi, Barbara Chase-Riboud, I.N, Jack Antonoff, Lorenzo Musetti, Tyler, the Creator, Zadie Smith, Troy Kotsur, Neneh Cherry, Kelsey Lu, Yang Fudong, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Alphonse Maitrepierre, Takeshi Kitano, and Lauren Hutton.
Edward Buchanan appears not just as a face in the campaign, but as a foundational figure—the luxury brand’s very first design director, whose early influence helped usher the house into its ready-to-wear era in the ’90s. Meanwhile, Lauren Hutton’s inclusion carries a unique weight—she famously carried an Intrecciato clutch in American Gigolo, a single moment that propelled the signature weave into a new realm of cultural recognition, forever intertwined with cinematic history.
Thanaerng, the Thai actress and model, bridges local fame with global reach, her image long synonymous with Southeast Asia’s fashion vanguard. Vicky Krieps, known for her quietly intense performances across European cinema, brings a kind of mood that feels right at home in the Italian brand’s slow, studied lens.
Julianne Moore—an enduring figure across fashion and film—offers a familiar poise: grounded yet without ever being outmoded. Shu Qi, a household name in Asian movies and an enduring figure of on-screen glamour, brings with her a dulcet calm—anchoring the visual tempo with a subtle energy.
Sculptor and poet Barbara Chase-Riboud enters as a living testament to form and material, her artistic legacy a seamless extension of the brand’s own. Meanwhile, I.N of Stray Kids—global performer, Gen Z darling—offers a shiny generational foil: charming, playful, and deeply in tune with the visual language of now.
Musician Jack Antonoff appears as the indie romantic—a cultural fixture who’s shaped the sound of the last decade with big hits and musical shifts. Tennis player Lorenzo Musetti brings his own kind of athletic poetry to the mix—the kind that makes movement feel like style in motion. And then there’s Tyler, the Creator: a polymath who’s never really fit into a single category. Musician, designer, aesthetic disruptor. His inclusion speaks to the luxury brand’s evolving curiosity—its openness to the outré and the unexpected.
In the short films, we see artists and artisans interacting in quiet, considered scenes: exchanging gestures, trading stories, sometimes just letting their hands do the talking. The references run deep—from the etymological link between “artist” and “artisan” (both from the Latin ars) to a wink at Bruno Munari’s Supplement to the Italian Dictionary, the 1963 cult classic celebrating the nuance of Italian hand gestures.
There’s a book coming too, set to launch in September with a second wave of imagery. But the message is already clear: for Bottega Veneta, true luxury isn’t just about what you see. It’s about what’s exchanged, and passed from one hand to the next, literally. And right now? It’s speaking volumes.
Photographer and Director Jack Davison
Art Director Paul Olivennes
Choreographer Lenio Kaklea
Directors of Photography James Beattie, Peter Hou
Stylist Robbie Spencer
Casting Julia Lange
Hair Sigi Kumpfmüller
Make-Up Hiromi Ueda
Set Designers Staci-Lee Hindley, Julia Wagner
Production Untitled Project
