Art & Design FEBRUARY 2017 : ISSUE iSSUe 69
An Ode To Art Tomas Maier, art-loving creative director at Bottega Veneta, explains why collaboration is the secret to extraordinary creative campaigns
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WORDS : Sarah royce-GreenSill
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ottega Veneta’s motto may be ‘when your own initials are enough,’ but its creative director Tomas Maier stamps more than ‘TM’ over the brand’s advertising campaigns. Since 2002, the German-born designer has invited a different photographer or artist to collaborate on each seasonal campaign. Lord Snowdon, Annie Leibovitz, Peter Lindbergh, Nan Goldin and Nick Knight are among the 27 artists to have captured Maier’s creative vision, and over 1,000 of the resulting cinematic images have been brought together in a weighty new tome: Bottega Veneta: Art Of Collaboration, published by Rizzoli.
The portfolio of work demonstrates Maier’s wide-ranging inspirations – he seeks out artists from a variety of fields, not just fashion. “I decided to start the Art of Collaboration as a way of introducing deeper ideas and narratives into our own way of intending our collections. I like the idea of exploring and finding new points of view, which can be brought in by artists that don’t necessarily work in fashion and look at it from a different perspective,” said Maier in an exclusive interview with Telegraph Luxury. “Some of my favourite campaigns are with those who do not usually work in fashion.” 28