Bottega Veneta’s new What Are Dreams film, shot by Duane Michals and starring Jacob Elordi, bridges eras of craft and imagination.

Today, luxury is the protection and embodiment of time.

Jonathan Anderson’s focus on craft, from JW Anderson to Loewe and now Dior, is not about nostalgia. It’s about time as value. It takes time to train, to learn, to master. It takes time to weave, to sculpt, to perfect. And it carries with it the weight of centuries of knowledge passed hand to hand. The artisan’s work is the material embodiment of time, a record of patience, repetition, and human touch.

Marx wrote that commodities as values are nothing but crystallised labour. He meant that every object carries within it the hours of human life invested in its making. That crystallised labour, the visible trace of time, is now rare and therefore precious.

At Chanel, the Métiers d’Art ateliers, the lace makers, the embroiderers, the feather artisans, are the brand’s temporal backbone. Each stitch preserves a rhythm older than fashion itself. Chanel’s genius lies in safeguarding the slow passage of knowledge and therefore of value.

Burberry’s recent recalibration toward its heritage pieces signals the same instinct of reconnecting with craft, culture, and longevity. The value we perceive is not only in the trench coat itself, but in the continuity of its making.

Louise Trotter’s debut for Bottega Veneta returned to the Intrecciato, that patient weave of leather that is both visual and symbolic proof of time. In 2023, Bottega launched Accademia Labor et Ingenium, a school dedicated to artisanal craft, extending that lineage forward.

Baudrillard wrote that modern society suffers not from a lack of production, but from a lack of meaning. Craftsmanship is like a philosophical correction: it restores meaning through time and material slowness.

What unites many of today’s designers, Anderson, Trotter, Wales Bonner, Rose, Rocha, Burton and Philo, is a craftsmanship shaped by education They are all graduates of Central Saint Martins, an institution that teaches time as the foundation of mastery. Students spend years studying historical dress, art history, and the theory of culture. You learn to slow down. To look closely. To make something by hand. To understand before you produce.

That is what makes a designer fluent in material, in culture, in history. As a Central Saint Martins alumna myself, I recognise this rhythm: the patience embedded in process. The belief that depth, like craftsmanship, cannot be rushed.

In 2015, I wrote that time is the ultimate luxury. In 2025, that feels truer than ever.