Alessandro Michele reinvents seduction with the Valentino Garavani Vain Bag

Maison Valentino opens a new chapter in its contemporary narrative. After the dreamlike reverie of the Nellcôte campaign, the Italian maison now presents a new piece within its modern mythology: Valentino Garavani Vain, a campaign that does not limit itself to showing bags, but builds a language. A language where femininity, intimacy and suspended time become emotionally dense symbols.

This second act, orchestrated by the sensorial genius of Alessandro Michele and captured by the restless and diffuse eye of Sharna Osborne, is presented as a love letter to analogue aesthetics. Far from digital perfection, this campaign is a return to the tactile, the impermanent, the raw. To that place where images are not only looked at, but felt.

The grain-laden framing, the colours blurred like memories impossible to fix, and the latent tension between the protagonists, evoke a sensibility typical of European experimental cinema. Here, the Vain bag does not appear as a simple functional object, but as a symbolic reliquary, an extension of the body, an imprint of the soul.

Credits: Valentino

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The campaign unfolds an intimate choreography between two women trapped in a perpetual instant. Their bodies – sometimes close, sometimes distant – seem to inhabit the same affective plane, a dimension in which desire is not explicit, but suggested. They look at each other and are absent. They meet and get lost. Everything happens on that threshold where the visible mingles with the hidden. And there, in the midst of this atmosphere charged with contained eroticism, is the Vain: not as a simple accessory, but as the keeper of secrets, the witness who articulates a relationship charged with mystery.

Valentino Garavani Vain

The Valentino Garavani Vain family presents itself as the perfect synthesis of tradition and avant-garde, of elevated craftsmanship and conceptual exploration. The silhouette – designed with almost architectural precision – exudes timeless elegance, but is infused with new nuances with each iteration. This season, the line features a new top handle version with an elongated shoulder strap in softly structured calfskin and precious leathers with a lustrous finish.

The debut of the oval vanity model, with its top lid reminiscent of personal heirlooms from the past, introduces a more sculptural and contemporary attitude, without abandoning the aesthetic code that makes Valentino recognisable. The shoulder versions return with handcrafted finishes. Floral embroidery executed in pearls, velvet, raffia or leather transforms each piece into a portable work of art. And the animalier edition introduces a wild counterpoint that adds tension to the aesthetic narrative.

Closing this collection of bags is the Soft Vain clutch: a piece that introduces a new gesturality into the Vain universe. Exuberant embroidery, contrasting karung handles and a softer, more fluid silhouette. This clutch is versatile, sophisticated. It is the physical translation of effortless glamour – the art of seducing without trying, of dominating the scene without saying a word.

You can now get your hands on the collection at valentino.com.

The show that marked the return of Alessandro Michele for Valentino.