Maison Valentino has unveiled a new digital chapter in its creative universe, placing the Valentino Garavani DeVain bag at the heart of an ambitious multi-artist exploration. Conceived as an evolving, online-first project, the initiative invites nine international creatives to reinterpret the DeVain through their own visual languages, each offering a personal lens on contemporary imagination and the range of digital expression.
The first instalment introduces five contributors whose practices span photography, AI-generated environments, collage and cinematic experimentation. Vienna-based artist Thomas Albdorf approaches the DeVain with his signature play on perception, using mirrored environments and meticulously staged compositions to create shifting, sculptural encounters with the bag. Enter The Void takes the narrative into dream terrain, constructing a surreal digital realm where floating fish, submerged architecture and drifting bags collapse the ordinary boundaries of time and space.
Chicago artist Paul Octavious turns to art history, reworking classical portraiture through animated digital compositions. His pieces transform the DeVain into a character suspended between centuries. Barcelona’s Albert Planella embraces the poetic potential of AI-driven storytelling, crafting a liminal sequence in which the bag becomes a metamorphic object, oscillating between clarity and reverie. Completing the first chapter, Tina Tona brings kinetic energy through multimedia collage and animation, celebrating colour, texture and rhythmic layering as she reveals the bag from multiple viewpoints.
Together, these works position the DeVain not merely as an accessory but as a catalyst for contemporary artistic dialogue, a symbol of personal expression interpreted through the tools and textures of the digital age.
It feels apt that such an unconventional digital showcase accompanies a bag whose very name plays on the interplay between divinity and self-regard. True to that spirit, the DeVain arrives in an impressive array of twenty-seven versions, spanning everything from relaxed denim and airy crochet raffia to plush shearling scattered with crystals.
The story is set to expand again in early December, when the remaining artists unveil their contributions and further widen the project’s landscape. In the meantime, the DeVain itself has already entered the physical world. Complete with a leather tag that can be stamped with the owner’s initials, it is now appearing on shelves in Valentino boutiques globally.
The video and images by artists Enter The Void, Paul Octavious and Albert Planella were generated using AI. All featured imagery by Enter The Void was used with the informed consent of the models here portrayed and of all the talents involved.
Later,
Olivia
