Italian architect Gaetano Pesce created a colourful resin-covered floor and designed 400 cotton-and-resin chairs for fashion brand Bottega Veneta's Spring Summer 2023 show in Milan.

The set was commissioned by Bottega Veneta creative director Matthieu Blazy, who presented his second collection for the house at Milan Fashion Week.

The temporary show space featured a custom resin-poured floor and 400 chairs that were not only a new design for Pesce, who is known for his colourful and tactile works with resin, but also his first original chair in years.

Bottega Veneta's Spring Summer 2023 show took place in a vast concrete space that saw Pesce's colour-pooled, resin-poured floor swirl between the walls of the warehouse-style room.

Named 'Come Stai?', the Pesce-designed chairs filled the Milanese building and followed the sculptural shapes of the floor that marked the runway in tones of pink, blue, orange and lilac.

"This space is a tribute to diversity," said Pesce. "It is about the human being; we are all different. People who say we are all the same – fuck them!"

"We are all different and this is our defining quality – otherwise, we are just a copy," he added. "We are all originals and this is one of the themes of my design."

The chairs had a more simplistic and restrained form than the ones for which Pesce is typically known, and were characterised simply by a blocky squared base and a tapering backrest.

Each chair was constructed using a cotton canvas, informed by fashion's use of traditional toile fabrics, which was then dipped in coloured resins and, in some cases, customised with hand drawings and text.

The chairs are all unique in their finishes and colourings.

Those that incorporated Pesce's hand drawings feature his iconic smiley faces, while others were branded "Bottega Veneta" across the back.

"As a designer I make originals, not standardised series', that's the old way – this is the new way," said Pesce. "And this is a fashion company that did a fantastic job in helping me realise such a project."

"It is a message that is super political – and it is not a museum or a gallery that is helping me convey it," he added. "Who makes culture today? The museum or the fashion company? It is food for the brain – not for pay. If we see the same thing each day, then we die."

The 400 chairs from Bottega Veneta's Spring Summer 2023 show will be exhibited and available for purchase at this year's Design Miami design fair.

Blazy explained that the collection, which he began designing after meeting with Pesce in New York City, was an ode to contrast and juxtaposition.

Continued from his first season, Blazy presented trompe l'oeil leather in the form of jeans, plaid shirts and pyjama shorts, which were later followed by reinterpreted tailoring and fringed dresses in colours drawn from Pesce's set.

"The world in a small room: the premise is simple – the collection is about a contrast of characters on the go, invited to travel through Gaetano Pesce's landscape," said Blazy.

"Here, two distinct worlds are juxtaposed, while our journey of craft in motion and quiet power continues."

In 2019, Bottega Veneta sent biodegradable boots, made from sugarcane and coffee, down its Autumn Winter 2020 runway.

Earlier this year, AMO created a paper house for Prada's Spring Summer 2023 show.

Photography is by Matteo Canestraro unless stated otherwise.