There’s no denying the magnitude of Detroit’s deeply rooted arts and culture, which effectively make the city into the tight-knit community it is. Over the last couple of years, there have been a myriad of arrivals there, from hotel expansions and restaurants, to designer boutiques. It takes more than a street address to make something capture the spirit of Detroit though, which is why Bottega Veneta tasked Amani Olu’s Olu & Company with supporting the brand’s presence there last fall. We spoke with Olu about the considerations his team took putting together the coveted fashion show's guest list, how they navigated media relations and the ways they brought authenticity to the boutique – all demonstrating that the question isn’t “why Detroit?” but, “why not?”
Bottega Veneta Salon 03 SS22
Why was your agency chosen for this project?
That's actually a great question because we don't really work in fashion. Keeping in mind that we didn’t work on the production of the actual fashion show, only the guest list, I think they were just looking for partners who could execute parts of their vision. They were asking, ‘how do we integrate ourselves authentically in this community, doing as little harm as possible?’ I think they were trying to cherry pick an all-star team, not knowing that there was an agency here that had the capacity to do everything in-house.
The only reason they found us is because somehow we ended up on their guest list to attend the event. And if you know anything about fashion shows, they do a microscopic vetting of your background before you are confirmed. When they came to us, I knew that they had already talked to a lot of other companies, organizations and galleries, so they already had intel. They realized this is a full service agency, that our team could do all the things they needed. It was like, ‘oh, my God, where have you guys been? We've been looking for you for six months.’
We were in New York for Armory Week, and we were like, how are we going to work on this project? It's in six weeks. And it wasn't just inviting some people to a party. It was super cool because it was the closest collaboration we’ve ever worked on.
How did you demonstrate the ‘why’ part of the brand being in Detroit?
So our answer to the ‘why’ was, ‘why not?’ And then pause. Tell me one reason why Bottega Veneta, under the leadership of Daniel Lee, would not find Detroit appealing. That means you don't know much about Daniel Lee; he’s from a small industrial town in England that very much looks and feels like Detroit. He grew up on techno and Detroit house, so he was already interested in the city.
This is where the automobile was essentially manufactured and created. This is the birthplace of techno, the birthplace of Motown. We built the first mall. We built the first highway. I could go on and on. If you're thinking about innovation, it's Detroit.
Daniel Lee didn't want it to be some random nod to the city. He was like, ‘no, I love Detroit, and we're going to do it there, and we're going to do it big.’ And they did it the biggest here. Out of all the cities – London, Berlin, NYC – they invested the most in Detroit.
And they let us do what we wanted to do. We explained that you can't come into Detroit on a high horse with a savior complex – you're going to be dead on arrival if you do that. As a fan, as somebody who appreciates the enduring culture of a Black city – come in that way and you'll be fine. But if you're like, we're saving the city, it's over for you because no one person can save the city. And also, what about the people who never moved out? Not because they couldn't afford to not move – there are some extremely wealthy neighborhoods in Detroit. They stayed because they love their city. So, there's not going to be one developer, one fashion brand, one anything. It's going to be a lot of people working together, bringing their skills and their strengths and their curiosity to Detroit that's going to see the city grow, develop and thrive so that everyone can benefit.
We often see brands pop up the same exhibition in different cities; why is it important to localize these experiences, and why was it particularly important for Detroit?
When you live in a city like New York, you're not having these conversations unless you live deep in an actual neighborhood. Not a community that's full of international residents, students, transients, gentrifiers. I'm talking about a strong, solid neighborhood. Anything you do in that space has to be local because otherwise, who are you talking to? In Detroit, the entire city is very proud of its local history and culture. And if you aren't tapping into that, then you're not speaking to people, you're not meeting them where they are. The people here are really proud, and they're not that easily impressed by outsiders or people who don't share that sentiment.
In other cities, you could just cut and paste, because I think it meets the expectations of people who live there. From New York to London to Berlin to Milan to Mexico City to Vancouver, unless you're tapping into what's really local about those places, your experience is largely going to be informed by the brands that you encounter. So, if I go to a brand’s pop-up somewhere in the city, and then I go to their museum in Milan, it's probably going to feel the same because they understand their customer and the kind of person that they're speaking to.
But in Detroit, that's not the case. People aren't necessarily a part of pushing forward a global conversation in a way that is as performative as people who live in these major art markets. I think that ‘performative’ is really the key word, because people are pushing forward a global conversation in a city like Detroit. They're just not doing it in a way where it has to look and feel the same exact way that everyone else is doing it in other places.
The culture of Detroit isn't money and status. It's a lot of different things that I think are a little bit more authentic to the people who live and work here. Sometimes people say to me, if you're a musician in Detroit, you would be considered more successful if you're not as famous. If only Detroit knows you, you could be the King of Detroit, the Queen of Detroit. And that's just how it is here.
It's interesting the way you talk about a city as a neighborhood in a community sense, versus a place on the map. Tell us how you brought the Detroit community into the second floor of the Bottega Firehouse.
My wife Aleiya and I approached it like, ‘okay, what would be a day in the life of a creative person in Detroit? What are some of the things they would do?’ They might go look at books. They might go to a record store. They might go to a gallery or ceramics shop. We tried to take what our experience would be and put it into the activation.
We brought in Hamtramck Ceramck, a collective of hyper-edgy ceramicists. We brought in Asma Walton, who runs the Black Art Library, which a lot of people know nationally, to create a reference library of radical Black poetry. You couldn't actually buy those books or take them with you, you kind of have to hang out there. We also brought in Underground Music Academy to do a pop-up record store, and all the proceeds went to their school and new buildings.
We also brought in Ruben Cardenas, who owns B_KS@ – think of CASA Magazines in New York, but very curated. So instead of, like, 10,000 magazines in a 200-square-foot space in Manhattan, he'll do, like, 50 titles that will make you ask, 'is it a book? Is it a magazine?' Titles that we would take for granted in a place like New York, because they're everywhere. But here, you don't necessarily have access to the latest limited-edition version. And we all know that magazines and books like that can provide a lot of inspiration for creative people.
Tell us a little bit about curating the fashion show list.
We worked on 80 percent of the guest list for the actual show. So you come in, and there would be these boards: the ‘no’ board, the ‘yes’ board, the ‘maybe’ board. And every day we were checking the boards to make sure that someone who was supposed to be in the ‘yes’ didn't accidentally get moved into a 'no' after we left or before we came in.
Daniel Lee wanted music people. So you're talking about the architects of techno, of Detroit house. That is who he wanted in the room. And if you look at some of those pictures, you'll see there were a lot of music people at that show. And I'm not talking about rappers, right? Yeah, Lil’ Kim was there, Mary J. Blige was there. They're probably the two biggest names, but there were people in that room that hadn't seen each other in ten years.
I make electronic music on the side as Scott Avery. And all my techno friends, when they introduce me, they're like, oh, he did the Bottega thing. I'm like, I want to talk about my music. I want to talk about my career as a musician. I don't want to talk about the show. But they couldn't believe it, because we brought the real Detroit into the room. And by real Detroit, I'm talking about people who didn't leave. They didn't abandon their community because it fell on hard times. They stayed, and they did what they could to make it safer and more livable for people. That was who we wanted in a room.
Outside of the fashion show and firehouse activation, how did you engage media traveling to Detroit to experience the city on an authentic level?
We managed the 40 journalists coming in from New York, many wondering ‘why are we in Detroit?’ Then they would meet me and my wife, and they were like, okay, you guys look like people we recognize. Then we would take them to places, and before you knew it, we were telling them, ‘hey, we really need to leave because we're late.’ It went from I don't care to I don't want to leave, in less than eight hours.
And that is what happens when you come to Detroit. It could be in a day or it could be in two years, but once it hits you, you don’t want to leave. When I leave Detroit, I can't wait to get back home. I don't want to live anywhere else. I just want to get back to my city.
