Bottega Veneta has a new chief executive, and he arrives from the perfume counter. Romain Spitzer takes the Milan house on the first of September. He spent thirty years selling scent before he came to leather.
Kering confirmed the appointment on 15 July. Spitzer reports to Luca de Meo, the group's chief executive, and joins the Kering executive committee. He will be based in Milan, where Bottega keeps its head office, close to the Veneto workshops where the leather is woven by hand.
The move
Spitzer comes straight from the other side of the industry. Until now he ran Fragrance Group LVMH Beauty as president and chief executive, a portfolio that held Maison Francis Kurkdjian, Acqua di Parma, Loewe Perfumes and Officine Universelle Buly. He leaves scent for calfskin. The two categories share a client and not much else.
The brief from Kering is commercial. De Meo wants desirability, closer ties to clients and sharper retail. He called Bottega one of the strongest and most distinctive houses in luxury, with exceptional craft and a unique creative identity, and said Spitzer had the leadership and international experience to open its next phase. That is a mandate to sell, not to design.
The record
Spitzer trained at ESCP and started at Guerlain in 1995 as a product manager. He moved through Jean Paul Gaultier Parfums and Yves Saint Laurent Parfums, where he was international marketing director. In 2006 he joined Parfums Christian Dior to head its fragrance business unit, then ran Spain and later the whole of Europe. He crossed to LVMH's fragrance division in 2016 and stayed there until now.
That path is marketing and distribution, built on managing desire at scale. Fragrance is a volume game dressed as a luxury one; a bottle sells on a name, a face and a mood. Bottega will test whether the same instincts hold when the object costs several thousand euros and lives or dies on how it feels in the hand.
The house
Bottega Veneta was founded in Vicenza in 1966 and made its name on intrecciato, the woven leather that carries no logo. Its old line, "when your own initials are enough," still frames the house. It has run quieter and more profitable than most of its stablemates, selling discretion to people who can afford to skip the monogram.
Inside Kering it sits beside Gucci, Saint Laurent and Balenciaga, and for years it has been the steady one. The atelier at Montebello Vicentino trains its own weavers through a school the house runs on site. Skill lives in the fingers there, and a chief executive from the fragrance halls will need to learn how long a single bag takes to make.
A house that sells leather without a logo has hired a man who spent his career selling names.
The Splendid EditThe studio
Louise Trotter holds the creative direction. She arrived last year from Carven, following Matthieu Blazy, who left for Chanel. She showed her first Bottega collection for spring and followed it with autumn, quiet and precise work that kept the house on its own register. Spitzer inherits her direction rather than setting his own.
The split is standard at Kering. A designer shapes the clothes, a chief executive runs the business, and the pairing works when the two read each other well. Trotter and Spitzer have not worked together before. Their first season as a team starts the moment he sits down.
The stakes
Kering has had a hard stretch. Gucci, its engine, stalled through a change of designer, and de Meo arrived from the car industry to steady the group. Bottega is one of the assets he can lean on while the larger repair goes on. A strong run in Milan buys patience elsewhere.
Spitzer is not the only new face. Kering named Gianfranco D'Attis chief executive of Alexander McQueen in the same stretch, part of a wider reset of the houses under de Meo. The group is moving its operators around while its designers settle. Bottega gets a manager with a long luxury memory and no history in leather goods.
The scale he steps into is large. Kering employed 47,000 people and posted revenue of 17.2 billion euros in 2024, and Bottega is one of the houses expected to carry the group while Gucci finds its feet. Spitzer will report numbers to de Meo every quarter. His fragrance years were spent doing exactly that.
What follows
The handover looks clean. Trotter's clothes keep coming; Spitzer counts them and works the shop floors. The open question is whether a fragrance executive can read a house that trades on touch, on the weight of a bag and the give of a strap.
September starts the answer. Bottega does not shout, and neither, on the evidence so far, does its new chief. The woven leather will end up speaking for both of them.
The Splendid Edit on Romain Spitzer's appointment as chief executive of Bottega Veneta, effective 1 September 2026. Details from Kering.
Photography courtesy of Bottega Veneta