Global Impact | Travel + Leisure

Tomas Maier
Milan

BACKSTORY "I was raised in Germany, in a family of architects, and was really into the California style—Richard Neutra, Rudolph Schindler, and Craig Elwood, who designed the Château Marmont in Los Angeles. But mathematics was never my strong point, so I ended up studying fashion in Paris, where I remained for twenty years." Now creative director at Bottega Veneta, Maier brings a Modernist precision to the Italian house, whose luxury leather goods are still handcrafted in the Veneto. FASHION SENSE Bottega Veneta's signature woven, or intreciatto, bags, in napa leather and deerskin (some come with Venetian glass-bead straps). Suede slippers and jackets, slim wallets and cotton shirts. Leather so soft, the bags pack flat and some shoes roll up, but the lines are sharp enough for a Bauhaus fanatic. FAVORITE PLACE "A lot of people think Milan is ugly, but there's great industrial architecture—Marcello Piacentini's Mussolini-era Palazzo di Giustizia, Giò Ponti's obelisk-shaped 1956 Torre Pirelli, the Rationalist Palazzo della Borsa." HOME BASE Miami Beach. "I love the mishmash of tropical Deco, Morris Lapidus, and Miami Vice. But I still keep an apartment at the Palais Royal, in Paris."



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