TACT MASTER | The German-born designer, shot by Peter Lindbergh  TOMAS MAIER SITS ON a white chair before a white table at the Manhattan studio where he designs Bottega Veneta collections when he is visiting the city. There is something strange about the silent Midtown space that I cannot quite place until the designer himself points it out: "It doesn't smell in here," he says. And yes, that's it. Despite dozens of (white) roses and trays of perfume bottles—we are here to discuss Bottega Veneta's debut men's scent—the room smells like nothing. This seems a significant accomplishment on a stiflingly hot summer day in New York, as well as an apt expression of the way Maier prefers to impose order on nature's messy course. "I like restraint," he says. "I like when things are pared-down. I like the idea of less being more."  A man of few and carefully chosen words, Maier, who is 56, grew up in a town of shady hills at the edge of Germany's Black Forest—a region Henry James once described as "wonderfully pretty" and "exactly arranged by nature for its role." That second quality must be native to the region, because Maier is likewise obsessed with the beauty of functionality. Every bag, wallet and pant produced by Bottega Veneta is designed to fit a need. Male customers, the designer says, are particularly attuned to the question of performance: "Men ask about provenance, how something has been treated, how it reacts, what they can get out of it," he says. "Will it last a long time without falling apart?"  MAIER FOR LESS | Bottega Veneta ad campaign by artist Peter Lindbergh  This emphasis on integrity is one of the reasons Tom Ford recruited Maier to lead Bottega Veneta in 2001. At the time, Ford had been at the helm of the Gucci label for seven years while also working with Gucci Group chief executive Domenico De Sole to aggressively expand the company's portfolio of brands. After acquiring Yves Saint Laurent in 1999, Bottega Veneta was the next property on Ford's list (Boucheron, Sergio Rossi, Balenciaga, and partnership agreements with Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen followed). Maier was then at Hermès, where he'd spent nine years burnishing a reputation for minimalism that was as soft-spoken as it was money-drenched. Like Hermès, Bottega Veneta had an exacting clientele. It also had a distinctly Italian heritage, even if its 1966 founding date made it an upstart next to Gucci or Ferragamo.  Maier was brought on board as creative director in part to deliver the brand back to its beginnings. In the years prior, Bottega Veneta had struggled to youth-ify itself by sending teensy zippered miniskirts down the runway and hiring Perry Farrell of Jane's Addiction to deejay at parties. It was an awkward look for a brand whose reputation was rooted in time-tested craftsmanship—a look that nearly bankrupted it. Maier was quick to strip away the adolescent baubles, command the brand's production resources in Vicenza and impose his ultra-refined viewpoint on every bag and shoe. Understatement became a credo.  Bottega Veneta ad campaign by artist Robert Longo  Under Maier's watch, Bottega Veneta's discreet approach to luxury has struck a chord among the global elite, resulting in the kind of hockey-stick growth more closely associated with Silicon Valley than with the workshops of northeastern Italy. Last year, its sales crossed the $1 billion mark—a nearly 3,000 percent increase since 2001—making it the second-largest brand after Gucci in the Kering (formerly PPR) luxury portfolio, with over two hundred stores from Manila to Beirut.  Maier himself lives off the beaten path, in an isolated compound in Palm Beach County. His longtime partner, Andrew Preston, is the cofounder and COO of the swimwear label they run together—called Tomas Maier—which they founded in 1997, independent from Bottega Veneta. It's no accident that the designer's coordinates and side projects place him as far outside the fashion industry fray as possible: "Some people feed off the melee of the fashion world and the circus of it," says Matt Tyrnauer, a fashion writer and director of the documentary Valentino: The Last Emperor, who penned an essay for a Bottega Veneta monograph last fall. "Tomas is cut from a different cloth." The designer does not pop up at premieres or parties; refused to have his name appended to the label when he signed on; and recruits fine artists—Robert Longo, Nan Goldin, Mona Kuhn, Larry Sultan—to shoot his campaigns rather than merely rely on the industry's short list of coveted fashion photographers. He has zero interest in cultivating visibility among celebrities. "I don't like when actors borrow clothes," Maier says—not because he holds any particular contempt for fame, but because borrowing reveals an unstylish lack of conviction. "It's very different to buy your clothes versus borrow them. When you buy clothes, it's a decision. You're saying, 'This looks like me.' It's a different story."  In the spring of 2012, a stand-alone Bottega Veneta men's store opened off Fifth Avenue in Manhattan—a space of almost menacing good taste, with suede-covered walls and door handles sheathed in leather. As with his aesthetic, the designer's retail theory mixes pragmatism and opulence: Displays are spare and well-labeled, with tags explaining an object's use, materials and price. After all, "You don't want to look at something for 10 minutes and then the guy tells you, 'This wallet is $1,500,' and you fall over backwards," Maier says. He clarifies: "That's not the price of a Bottega wallet."  Looks from the fall/winter 2013 runways  It's not far off, though. And while the cost of a Bottega Veneta wallet—typically priced in the upper hundreds, though occasionally well exceeding $1,500—might raise eyebrows, the wallet itself is designed to fly beneath the radar. "I am not particularly keen on logos," Maier says, slightly understating the matter. (You will not find a logo on anything he designs.) "It's more interesting to create a product that is 'signed' by the way it's made: by the color, materials, design, functionality. That signs the product. That's how you recognize it— if you need to recognize it."  Discretion, of course, is relative. Maier may not put logos on his bags, but anyone who's interested will recognize the brand's signature intrecciato weave at 10 paces. You've seen it before—picture a lattice piecrust shrunken down, tightened and made of leather. If a $4,000 handbag is not within reach, the company offers intrecciato Kleenex boxes, picture frames and doggy bowls. These items may be pricey enough to qualify as heirlooms, but they are not meant to be kept behind glass. Maier's clothing is likewise better worn than collected—a point demonstrated by the fact that his garments are often more striking in motion than on a hanger. An austere gray suit from last fall's menswear collection is tailored so sharply that it improves a wearer's gait; coats in muted ash-gray flannel shimmer as the light distorts their color.  As with all things Bottega Veneta, the first men's scent was developed according to strict Maier-instituted rules. The designer wrote a creative brief, invited a dozen noses to interpret it and received all 12 proposals over the course of a single day. He did not include images in his brief—"I wouldn't want to fast-track a creative person by giving them visuals," he says. "I write a story—a paragraph, a situation, a place, an environment—and that's it. A nose reads between the lines." Usually, he says, "there are one or two people who nail it."  From left: The new men's fragrance; a Cabat tote bag with the brand's signature intrecciato weave  The result is a potent scent: spicy and woody, like being enfolded in a leather-jacketed embrace. If the notion of bottled perfume suggests refined indoor pursuits, Bottega Veneta Pour Homme tweaks the expectation with its brisk outdoorsy quality; as with Maier's other inventions, it reveals itself in layers and at its own pace. After an hour on the skin, notes of pine and juniper surface, as though the wearer had gently daubed himself before stomping through the woods. With its charcoal bottle and leather collar, the scent makes a handsome sibling to Bottega Veneta's women's fragrance, which debuted in 2011 wearing a similar outfit (key difference: a vanilla collar instead of a black one). If the men's version is half as successful as the women's—both critically and commercially—it should satisfy Maier.  Rolling out a fragrance on a Bottega Veneta scale is usually a collaborative process, but when asked how many members of his team helped develop the scent, Maier looks surprised at the question. It was just him, he says. No one else. And once he points it out, the alternative seems impossible, considering Maier's conviction—and his love of control. "The market," he says, "will always want you to make a scent that resembles a scent that came before it. But that is not my customer. That's not the man I'm catering to."
As creative director of Bottega Veneta, Maier has parlayed under-the-radar luxury into a billion-dollar business. This fall, he launches his first fragrance for men.