The white wall still sweats the dry heat of the Salento sun. It is a new Cinema Paradiso in a southern paradise, where a magic box, like the cinema, has arrived and waits for us. A sort of New Delivery Cinema: an anonymous cardboard box, bearing anonymous logistics, hides a green box, which seems alive when opened. A green scenic machine — an immediate and non-subliminal symbol of Daniel Lee’s inventions. A design twist that plays off of the classic brown and beige tonalities that underpin the very idea of Bottega Veneta. A new and unexpected beginning has been noted. On arrival, Lee immediately overwhelmed traditions and activities to create his own special Bottega Veneta, overcoming past generational boundaries that confined it to the realm of bon ton and sur ton women. Lee shifted Bottega into a genderless universe where content counts and etiquette doesn’t, which in this case is “super cool.”
But back to the cinema, beloved by Lee. Just follow the instructions and the Nebula, the iPhone of portable projectors,begins with a short film on contemporary masculinity and fashion, made with director and photographer Tyrone Lebon. Clothing that becomes performative, intimate, and private, travel companions, friends and inspirers of Lee. The light in the night presents, here in no particular order, with the benevolence of the prickly pear on the wall, Roberto Bolle, Barry Keoghan, filmmaker Dick Jewell, the art of George Rouy, legend Michael Clark, singers and rappers Neneh Cherry, Roman, Tricky, Obongjayar, Octavian. Eight minutes dirty and fast, poetic, silent, and hypnotic. As simple as the lines of this contemporary Bottega Veneta, with powerful and intriguing volumes, without seasons, beyond seasons, in a privileged dialogue with creativity that is never taken for granted. Beauty is simple when it is beautiful, like the light that comes out of the projector under the stars of Salento, to renew the wonder of cinema, art, and fashion. Short, medium, or long. Art, fashion, performance, whatever. Genderless.
