Speaking backstage shortly after wrapping up his spring/summer 2024 show in Milan last September, Bottega Veneta creative director Matthieu Blazy was excited about craft. His collection showcased the Italian house’s tradition of handcrafting and tailoring, punctuated by pieces like a crocheted dress adorned with raffia pompoms individually knotted to the surface. The accessories featured leatherworking techniques like Bottega Veneta’s signature Intrecciato weave, but with updates like reversible textured strips of leather that mimicked banana leaves on bags and sandals. “Those are very small details, but they are meaningful to us,” Blazy later explained. “It’s about saying, ‘Where can we push savoir-faire?’ And how do we try to innovate?’ Where people call craft ‘dusty’, I think the opposite is true. It’s a world of possibilities.”
There is something magical about putting on a garment or accessory that has been touched by a human hand. It gives life to the piece and awakens something in the wearer: a hyper-awareness of the care and attention that went into its creation.
Craft was at the heart of a number of spring collections, from the patchwork and distressed leather at Prada to the reconstructions of upcycled garments at Balenciaga, exaggerated embellishments at Loewe and baroque lace patterns at Valentino. Meanwhile, Tod’s staged its show at the Laboratori Scala Ansaldo, which employed a number of the house’s master craftsmen. In France and Italy, the element of craft has long been central to high fashion, whether it is the premieres of the Parisian ateliers – couture masters who have trained for decades in skills such as tailoring and embroidery – or the shoemakers and leatherworkers who make shoes. bags, accessories and other items according to strict specifications and standards. Traditionally passed down largely through apprenticeships and even families, these highly specialized skills are essential to the rarefied aura surrounding the products themselves.
That tradition of craftsmanship is now at a crossroads. Like other industries, fashion has had to adapt in the face of technological innovation, economic uncertainty and the demands of our global, automated, algorithmic world. Over the past two decades, this has led many luxury brands to focus more on parts of their operations that increase efficiency and extend their reach. A generation of older craftsmen and traders are also starting to disappear from the workforce. At the same time, opportunities for younger artisans to gain the experience needed to work at a major brand or house – which can take years to build through low-paid internships and apprenticeships – have become increasingly scarce. These and other factors, such as the rising cost of living, have helped to hinder the pipeline of talent and impact that can afford to pursue the life of an artisan, making the prospect of such a career unattainable for many is becoming. According to a recent report by Comité Colbert, a trade association representing more than 90 French luxury houses, around 20,000 artisan jobs in fashion were vacant at the end of 2022. However, efforts are now underway to fill those functions. Luxury conglomerates like the parent companies of Bottega Veneta, Kering, and LVMH and houses like Chanel, Prada, and Valentino are taking steps to empower a new generation of makers to be stewards of these highly specialized traditions and propel them into the future.
Not long after Blazy’s show in Milan, Bottega Veneta announced the opening of Accademia Labor et Ingenium, or Academy of Craft and Creativity, in Italy. Located between the house’s workshop and a production site in the Veneto region, the academy welcomed its first class of 50 students in October for a comprehensive training program in the house’s traditional forms of craft making, as well as business-related instruction. There is also an innovation-oriented program for existing employees. “The intention is to nurture artisan craftsmanship for both new and established employees, as well as external students, and to protect the unique artisan savoir faire,” said Barbara Zanin, head of leather goods product development at Bottega Veneta, who oversees the academy . “Sharing knowledge between generations is an important part of the school’s ethos, with master artisans passing on their experience and skills to younger students.”
Other heritage houses have implemented their own initiatives. Dior, part of LVMH, has a long-standing relationship with Mumbai’s Chanakya School of Craft, which has done much of the embroidery for designer Maria Grazia Chiuri’s collections. Loewe has several similar projects, including the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize competition, now in its seventh edition, which supports independent crafters through funding. This month, the Spanish brand will unveil an exhibition in Shanghai about the history of its own handicrafts. Prada’s Prada Group Academy functions as an in-house school with in-studio masterclasses and training, including programs on sustainability, product development and more technologically advanced ways of creating, such as 3D printing. Valentino’s La Bottega dell’Arte is a nine-month course in which participants learn in-house techniques at a former premiere and create and present their own work to the house’s creative director, Pierpaolo Piccioli. Chanel’s approach was to acquire and help support smaller independent workshops, such as Scottish cashmere manufacturer Barrie and French embroiderer Lesage, creating special collections under the house’s Métiers d’Art initiative, founded in 1985 to preserve artisanal traditions and support.
Last fall, LVMH announced the development of a new craftsmanship center in Paris, set to open in 2025. The building will house part of LVMH’s 10-year-old creative vocational training institute, the Institut des Métiers d’Excellence. be open to the public. Last year, the company also launched a new career path program through Tiffany & Co., which LVMH acquired in 2021, in partnership with the Rhode Island School of Design. According to Alexandre Boquel, director of LVMH Métiers d’Excellence, the demand for the type of training and exposure they provide is high. “The new generation of craftsmen that we see applying to the maisons seems to have a renewed interest in manual professions,” he says.
This renewed interest in physical craftsmanship is a shift that has also become apparent in design schools, where curricula over the years have emphasized that type of work. “We haven’t seen that in a while,” said Dirk Standen, dean of the School of Fashion at the Savannah College of Art and Design. It also happens, says Standen, with entrepreneurship in mind: “As always, we have students who will work at Puma, Nike or Louis Vuitton when they graduate, but we also have some students who plan to become apprentices at small artisan brands in Japan or Italy with the intention of starting their own specialty labels.”
Nevertheless, it can still be difficult for young creators to navigate these specialized paths, either because they were never made aware that this was a viable career option, or because the opportunities simply weren’t there in the past. Kenneth D. King, who teaches haute couture design and techniques at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, also points out that our current fascination with famous designers and fashion reality shows has reinforced the idea that the more visible and famous you are , the more successful you will be. “The people who practice the craft of making these luxury goods are not visible and are considered subordinate to the process,” he explains. “The real work of creating couture – pattern making, construction, tailoring, couture embellishments – seems to be left out of the picture.” But, he adds, “the people behind the scenes are crucial. You are limited by the capabilities and knowledge of your staff. Unless you can execute the entire design from the sketch, like [Cristóbal] Balenciaga has been able to do, you need these people to realize an idea.”
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