VALENTINO SPRING SUMMER 2020 MEN’S COLLECTION – PARIS FASHION WEEK

Traveling is certainly a physical activity, but it truly enlightens and enriches when it takes the form of a free-flowing, borderless meandering of the mind. Travelers who go on journeys within the realm of their own minds are capable of transcending boundaries to reach the elsewhere, expanding possibilities and imagining utopias.

As signs and traces of different cultures mingle and flow in a sartorial present that makes everything possible, an exotic utopia materializes. Differences come together and everything finds a meaning – another meaning, with an unexpected significance – in the dialogue with the other.

Lines flow, colors glow as the high and the low, the bright and the earthy mingle and twine. The purity of the djellaba, the simplicity of the caftan, the human authenticity, a touch of handmade crochet and embroidery encounters the precision of the suit, the ease of flowing outerwear. Imaginative landscapes – exotic utopias, indeed – created by artist Roger Dean, who designs the elsewhere, many elsewhere’s, in bright colors onto surfaces, materializing imagined places, making them visible, hence real.

As the journey changes the traveler, readdressing habits, gestures and views, so the act of dressing gains a lighthearted absent-mindedness: a straw hat on the head, Valentino Garavani Rockrunner Plus sneakers at the feet, practical bags in the hand. There is no final destination to the journey, which happens in the here and in the now.

Utopias have the power to shape what is not there, and are charged with the urge to make it happen. The elsewhere is made possible.