Louise Trotter is a British fashion designer whose work joins an understanding of a complete wardrobe with close attention to material. Appointed creative director of Bottega Veneta at the end of 2024, she joined the house in January 2025. Her route to the role included both international clothing businesses and smaller labels, developing a sensibility responsive to the realities of getting dressed.

Trotter studied fashion at Newcastle Polytechnic, graduating in 1991. She began at Whistles before taking roles in New York at Calvin Klein, Gap and Tommy Hilfiger. Returning to Britain, she worked at Jigsaw and became creative director of Joseph in 2009. Nine years there gave her room to develop clothes whose appeal depended on cut and texture, with an everyday wardrobe providing the organizing idea.

She joined Lacoste in 2018, becoming its first female creative director. The job brought that wardrobe thinking into a sporting house, where the polo shirt and tracksuit could be reconsidered through volume and fabrication. In a Highsnobiety interview, she discussed how her years at Joseph had allowed her to mature creatively. A move to Carven in 2023 returned her to a more intimate setting, producing three runway collections before her Bottega Veneta appointment.

Her arrival at the Italian house placed her approach inside a business identified with leather craft. Kering’s announcement emphasized her responsiveness to real life and attention to workmanship. The continuity is practical as well as visual. Across different price levels and identities, Trotter has approached a house through the clothes its customers might actually keep in rotation, allowing the quality of a material or the fall of a shoulder to establish the distinction.