In State of the Art, a column for Highsnobiety, Chris Erik Thomas untangles the crossover between fashion and art.

Fashion brands are better when they find a muse. Some person who grafts cleanly onto the codes of the house, inspiring its creative director through their personal style or sheer ambiance. Audrey Hepburn to Givenchy, Jane Birkin to Hermès, Naomi Campbell to Versace. 

We can add “Peggy Guggenheim to Bottega Veneta” to the list. Since taking over as creative director of the brand in January 2025, Louise Trotter has drifted again and again to the incredibly stylish late art collector as a reference point both literal and figurative. The surprise here isn’t that the fashion house has latched onto a muse like Guggenheim, who died nearly half a century ago; it’s that it hadn’t deepened such devotion sooner. 

This particular pairing feels prophetic, if only you cast your gaze to the swampy lagoons of Venice. It was here, in 1966, that Michele Taddei and Renzo Zengiaro founded Bottega Veneta — literally translating to “the Venetian shop” — as a small luxury leather goods workshop. And it was here that Guggenheim lived for 30 years, establishing the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal in 1949 — her private home turned public institution, now one of Italy’s most prestigious modern art museums — and staying until her death in 1979. 

To say that Guggenheim was one of the foremost cultural queens of those famous canals is putting it lightly, not just because she was often seen on the waters in her private, turquoise-painted gondola. She had such an impact upon the city that she came to be known as “The Last Dogaressa,” a nickname tied to the royalty of the old Republic of Venice.

But it was her bohemian, theatrical personal style that made just as much a wave as her art patronage. She wore oversized butterfly- and bat-shaped sunglasses and chunky statement jewelry designed by artist friends paired with massive fur coats, pleated silk gowns by Spanish designer Mariano Fortuny, and a closet full of Schiaparelli’s surrealist textiles. Within the socially conservative city, Guggenheim was an eccentric anomaly: a woman completely in control of her power, with style to boot.

The collector’s Venetian spirit has influenced other brands, of course. New York designer Anna Sui’s “Madcap Heiress” Fall/Winter 2025 “ collection paid tribute to Guggenheim’s signature sunnies, but Trotter has employed a far lighter touch to keep the nods entirely aligned with her Bottega vision. The brand’s Spring/Summer 2026 campaign saw models dressed in very Guggenheim oversized sunglasses and fiberglass “fur” coats — one incredible outwear piece I’m sure Peggy would’ve loved — lounging around the Lido and other key locations within the city.

Alongside the visual nods to Guggenheim, though, are more overt gestures that tie Bottega Veneta directly to the art world. After quietly lending its support to an exhibition of ceramics by Lucio Fontana at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Bottega Veneta has just flexed its cultural muscle more visibly, funding the London stop of the touring Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector exhibition. 

Though the show started its tour in Venice this year at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, its move to London this November is something of a homecoming, considering the show centers on Guggenheim’s one-year stint running her London gallery from 1938 to 1939. 

It’s a perfectly fitting next step in Trotter’s reorientation of the Venetian fashion house toward a more feminine touch — she is, after all, Bottega’s first-ever woman creative director. Using Mrs. Guggenheim as a style icon in ad campaigns is one small step toward putting her mark on the brand, but by sponsoring actual exhibitions about the art icon, Trotter is confirming her place in this new Bottega era.

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