Gucci’s Owner Just Handed a $1.5 Billion Brand to a Designer You’ve Never Heard of

  • Daniel Lee worked behind the scenes at Celine, Balenciaga
  • New designer takes over after sales stagnated since 2015

Luxury products sit on display in the window of a Bottega Veneta store in Oslo.

Photographer: Kyrre Lien/Bloomberg
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Kering tapped an unknown designer who worked at luxury rival LVMH’s Celine to revamp the Italian handbag-maker Bottega Veneta.

The 32-year-old British designer Daniel Lee will take over as creative director of the French luxury company’s third-largest brand in July. He’s succeeding Tomas Maier, the German designer who built Bottega Veneta into a 1.3 billion-euro ($1.5 billion) business but one whose sales peaked in 2015.