How Valentino turned one bag into nine parallel worlds—and what that says about the house today.
Luxury loves a good reinvention story. But not the reckless kind; the thoughtful kind that protects the craft while expanding the canvas. The new Valentino Garavani DeVain digital creative project sits firmly in that camp. Instead of handing the bag to algorithms, Valentino handed the Valentino Garavani DeVain bag to nine artists across photography, CGI, collage, animation, and, yes, selective AI-driven image-making.
The result is a constellation of nine visual narratives that feel contemporary without falling into the trap of tech-for-tech’s-sake. It’s a reminder that digital doesn’t need to mean depersonalized—that technology can be a tool, not the author.
This is the first hint that Valentino isn’t chasing the aesthetic of the moment, but reshaping how luxury collaborates in a time when AI is both overhyped and under-questioned.
A Project That Starts With the Bag, Not the Software
The Valentino Garavani DeVain bag itself is a study in contradictions; soft yet sculptural, elegant yet unstructured. It’s Alessandro Michele’s new expression of contemporary femininity: fluid, self-aware, and a little mischievous.
Valentino didn’t ask the artists to “promote” the bag. It asked them to interpret it. That difference shows.
Across the project’s first reveal, five creators; Thomas Albdorf, Enter The Void, Paul Octavious, Albert Planella and Tina Tona—treat the DeVain not as a product but as a muse. And that’s why the handbag doesn’t merely appear in their work; it transforms.
Thomas Albdorf: Reality, Distorted Rather Than Deleted
Albdorf approaches the DeVain with a photographer’s sensitivity and a sculptor’s eye. His studio-based videos use mirrors, reflections, and controlled distortions to multiply the bag until it becomes something architectural.
There is no attempt to mimic AI or glitch aesthetics. Instead, he builds illusions through physicality—almost a rebuttal to generative shortcuts. His work feels like someone asking, quietly: What if magic came from craft, not computation?
Enter The Void: A Dreamworld Where AI Knows Its Place
Enter The Void is the artist whose practice leans most visibly into AI, but even here, it isn’t the star. He constructs a surreal underwater desert hotel (yes, the paradox is the point), inhabited by floating fishes and floating DeVains.
The AI-generated environments become mood, not message. They’re woven into a subconscious world shaped by memory, cinema, and daydreaming—human references, not machine hallucinations.
If AI is used, it’s used intentionally, not as a replacement for imagination. This is what makes the work feel responsible rather than opportunistic.
Paul Octavious: Classical Art Gets a Digital Pulse
Octavious builds portraits that feel like 16th-century canvases nudged into motion. His digital compositions animate the DeVain into something between a relic and a contemporary motif.
It’s playful, but informed. And crucially, it’s human-led: the AI-assisted sequences serve the painterly quality, never overshadowing it.
Albert Planella: A Cinematic Mood Piece With an Inner Echo
Planella blends AI with live-action sensibilities—rhythm, silence, pacing—to create imagery that feels like it’s on the edge of a dream. His DeVain becomes a metamorphic object, transformed just enough to intrigue, not confuse.
The AI influence appears as texture, not takeover. That’s the difference between using AI well and relying on it lazily.
Tina Tona: Colour, Collage, Chaos and Control
Tona approaches the DeVain with her signature multimedia collage style: vibrant, layered, and rhythmic. Her animations and compositions show the bag from multiple viewpoints, stitching texture, colour, and form into something alive.
No AI here—just a hyperactive imagination anchored by craft and cultural storytelling.
A Human-First Model for Digital Luxury
The Valentino Garavani DeVain digital creative project isn’t a manifesto against AI, nor is it a celebration of it. Instead, it quietly proposes a third path:
Technology belongs in the hands of artists, not in place of them.
Three artists used AI. Two did not. All produced work that feels distinctly authored. The project doesn’t preach “responsibility”; it demonstrates it—by preserving accountability, voice, aesthetic identity, and human intent.
It’s a rare balance in a moment when the internet is flooded with synthetic visuals that no one technically owns or remembers.
The Future Doesn’t Need to Be Radical to Be New
If there’s a blueprint here, it’s this: luxury doesn’t have to choose between innovation and authorship. The Valentino Garavani DeVain bag becomes a focal point for a wider idea: that digital creativity works best when you know exactly who made it, why they made it, and how they used the tools at their disposal.
A simple idea, executed with a generosity rarely seen in AI-era image-making.
A future shaped by artists, with technology in the supporting role where it belongs.