Dear Shaded Viewers,
Maison Valentino’s latest chapter in the Valentino Garavani DeVain digital creative project reinvents luxury fashion as a bold fusion of artistry, technological innovation, and a fresh vision of femininity. The DeVain bag, first introduced by Alessandro Michele for Pre-Fall 2025, is brought to life through the eyes of four distinctive international artists: Animus Pax, Annie Collinge, Total Emotional Awareness, and ZCaptures. Each artist is invited to use experimental digital methods to create visual stories that take the DeVain bag beyond its traditional boundaries and into the realm of contemporary visual culture.
The DeVain’s architecture itself captures contemporary luxury’s new direction—soft yet structured, versatile enough to play with nappa leather, denim, crochet raffia, metallic finishes, or showers of crystals, while remaining spacious and infinitely customizable. Maison Valentino invites clients to make the DeVain their own with a palette of twenty-seven variations and a personalized antique-brass name tag, a subtle nod to the blending of collective heritage and individual identity.
Animated by Animus Pax’s poetic stop-motion films, the bag is transformed, each texture and detail becoming a protagonist. Annie Collinge’s playful, dreamlike vignettes disrupt expectations with a mix of tangible objects and cut-out silhouettes, bringing humor and imagination into fashion imagery. Total Emotional Awareness, the moniker of Christopher Royal King, plunges the DeVain into the surreal—here, AI-generated visuals, sprawling pop references, and endless geometries envelop the viewer in a digital fever dream. ZCaptures, aka Zeren Badar, pitches the bag into bold collisions with everyday pop objects, constructing tableau that are equal parts fantasy and neo-dada provocation. The overarching theme is freedom—freedom for artists to invent, and for wearers to express themselves through creative participation.
With this project, Maison Valentino positions itself at the intersection of couture, digital transformation, and contemporary art. Artistic collaboration does not just serve as a marketing tool, but as the engine of the brand’s reinvention, challenging the conventions of the fashion industry and inviting audiences to experience design as a living, multi-authored narrative. Here, the DeVain bag is no longer just an accessory, but a vibrant node in the story of art meeting technology—the next chapter in Valentino’s legacy of beauty, individuality, and innovation.
