How Bottega Green became the trendiest colour in fashion

That bright hue of green, professionally known as Kelly green and sitting somewhere between parakeet, apple and shamrock, is fashion’s new colour du jour. It has silently become one of the new codes and trademark colours for Italian luxury house Bottega Veneta, whose plush leather bags and accessories are synonymous with the hue since introducing it for the brand’s Fall 2019 collection.

Dubbed Bottega Green, the colour – like all trends - has infiltrated countless of high street versions, contemporary designer and even other luxury brand collections. A quick filter search for green on Zara’s website results in a plethora of accessories matching the same tone, including a strikingly similar version of the padded shoulder bag with gold chain that is now as instantly recognisable as a Louis Vuitton Speedy, a Chanel 2.55 or Balenciaga City bag. Zara’s design may have been tweaked with a different quilt stitch but the resemblance is uncanny.

A new set of codes

The response to Bottega Green has been both enormously popular with customers and the media as it has been lucrative for the Milan-based maison, where accessories make up nearly three quarters of its revenue. The brand has rolled out the colour to other categories and products, like rubber puddle boots, leather outerwear, a fluffy bathrobe coat selling for a stiff 6,500 euros and various blouses and tops, but has been careful to not saturate its offer in order sustain peak interest and demand. Interestingly, even the brand’s packaging has been given a makeover, with tropical green boxes housing its accessory treasures.

Creative Director Daniel Lee has single-handedly installed a new set of codes that are a marketer’s and CEO’s dream in achieving high status popularity and commercial prominence so quickly. Brand’s like LVMH-owned Givenchy, which have recently installed new creative leads, will be taking a note out of Bottega’s playbook, where in less than three years the company went from under-the-radar luxury to one of the most desirable brands of the moment, never needing a logo to sell its wares.

But pop colours and marked details like woven leather are as much perceived logo-riders as an actual written font. Gucci’s Double G logo is no more recognisable than Bottega’s padded intreccio leather with its triangle closure, at least not to someone with fashion awareness. The same goes for the colour Bottega Green.

Yesterday, on hearing the news of Burberry’s changing of the guard for a new CEO, it occurred to me what if Daniel Lee made a swift exit at Bottega Veneta? How would that affect the codes he installed that are so linked with his appointment? That colour green would probably become sour grapes.