“There's somethingegalitarian about the way he works.” the artist Anne collier says of Blazy.
On a Thursday night in spring, the lobby of the Hotel Danieli, near San Marco Square in Venice, stirs awake and, with the twilight at its windows, comes to life in dazzling evening dress. Women weave between the furniture in yellow suits and beautifully draped dresses. Men tread the stone floors and old-world rugs in interesting shoes. The travellers are glamorous and restless, with a charge of misbehaviour spilling out onto the edge of the canals. Venice, the unchanging city, seems in the thrall of energy that is brand new.
Matthieu Blazy, of Bottega Veneta, appears as if from nowhere and whirls down the hotel's main staircase toward the crowd below. He is tall, with cropped light brown hair, and wears a loose tan summer suit—double-breasted, open, with the sleeves rolled up—over a black T-shirt. His shoes are of soft woven leather, and his manner is of lucid confidence. Late last year, at 37, Blazy was named creative director of Bottega Veneta, the best-known fashion brand from this windy and tastehaunted region of northeastern Italy, after a career that looked to many people like a game of hiding in plain sight. (As the artist Sterling Ruby, who has worked closely with Blazy, Says: “I just thought: it's about time.”) He had been hired out of school by Raf Simons before moving on to work at Maison Martin Margiela and Ćeline, where he was known for a pragmatic understanding of the market and an interest in ambitious art. While many young designers were tapped for top posts, Blazy seemed the eternal deputy, gathering authority with small gestures of startling inspiration outside the public eye.
Before ascending to the helm of Bottega Veneta, Blazy was its design director—the No. 2 post, behind Daniel Lee, who departed suddenly last year—and says that little in his working habits changed with the promotion. (“I like to work in teams,” he says, “It's not me facing products and giving opinions.”) His tastes are considered and secure, but he's in the habit of whisking them behind his back like a concealed bouquet, the better to hear what others think; he has, unusually among creative directors, a reputation for being transparent, approachable, widely liked. “There's something egalitarian about the way he works,” the artist Anne Collier, who designed a fragrance alongside Blazy, says. “He's not an egomaniac or hypernarcissist or mega-diva or anything like that.” Simons: “Matthieu is, I think, one of the loveliest people I've ever met in my life.”
He is also, it turns out, a hard man to keep up with. As the crowd in the Danieli grows, he is suddenly gone, out the hotel's small side door, where a water taxi purrs in waiting. It's a cool night, and rain from some low clouds over the harbour has
