The Height Of Luxury

By Kate Betts

Like the brands they celebrate, fashion parties cling to predictable formulas: a big-name DJ, a handful of A-list celebrities and the requisite industry insiders. But when the Italian leather-goods house Bottega Veneta held a dinner in Paris at the chic Relais Plaza restaurant in March, the mood was intentionally low-key and intimate.

On one side of the room, ensconced on a banquette with some Parisian notables, was Franc,ois-Henri Pinault, the affable CEO of PPR (formerly Pinault-Printemps Redoute), which owns Bottega Veneta and other high-end brands such as Gucci. At the center table, surrounded by furniture dealers and a smattering of old friends, sat Tomas Maier, 49, the German-born creative director of Bottega Veneta and the designer largely responsible for ushering in a profitable countertrend of subtlety and refinement to the overblown, logo-besotted luxury market. The mood he had created for the dinner jibed seamlessly with the mood he has established at the brand: understated.

Although the dinner was a celebration of Bottega Veneta's new Avenue Montaigne store--a place that Maier designed right down to the boulangerie-style window display of rows of woven-leather accessories--there were other reasons for a fete. In addition to new lines of fine jewelry and furniture, Maier opened 18 stores in 2005; 10 more will make their debut this year. He has transformed Bottega Veneta, which is on its way to an estimated $238 million in sales this year, into PPR's second most successful label after Gucci--even surpassing the iconic Yves Saint Laurent brand. Revenue grew 66% last year to $190 million, and profits tripled to $17 million. PPR didn't expect to earn a dime on the brand--which it bought in 2001 from the Moltedo family who founded it--until next year.

Maier and his team are luxury rebels. They have refused to succumb to the democratization of luxury brands, marked by big logos, lower-priced offerings and "it" bags. Even the most label-conscious consumers--the Japanese--don't seem to miss the blatant badges. At a trunk show in the brand's new Omotesando boutique in Tokyo last week, Maier sold $308,000 worth of bags in less than two hours. (Of course, the Japanese customers asked him to sign them on the inside.) "'It' bags mean nothing," said Maier of styles like Fendi's $1,430 B bag. "Women are the ones who decide if a bag is good or not. They know exactly what they want. So the more I can drift away from what's fashion and trend, the better it is for the brand."

Maier's concept--that the consumer can recognize a brand by the design and quality of the product instead of by a logo--is limited to a very sophisticated consumer, but elitism is what makes it work. A survey conducted last week among wealthy Americans by the New York City--based Luxury Institute revealed that Bottega Veneta outranked Hermes and Armani as the most prestigious luxury fashion brand this year.

"This is a product for people who really consume luxury very exclusively," says Pinault, referring to what luxury gurus now call the "ueber-premium" market. "There are very few brands in this segment of the market, and those that exist are traditional and serious. What Tomas has done is bring a very innovative and avant-garde vision to this brand's history of craftsmanship."

The woman who buys Bottega may not need logos, but she sure needs a lot of cash. A typical bag--the popular woven Cabat tote, for example--rings in at more than $2,000 and can run as high as $75,000 if made in an exotic skin such as crocodile. The company's real signature--woven, or intrecciato, leather--was developed in 1966 when Bottega Veneta started as a family business in the Veneto region of Italy, an area known for soft leather and the craftsmen who know how to manipulate it. The big idea back then--and still today--was to use glove leather for bags, creating a soft, slouchy shape and more casual style, one that didn't need logos. The original company slogan says it all: "When your own initials are enough."