Valextra celebrates its timeless values and aesthetics, showcasing the iconic collections and products that shaped the identity of the brand since its founding in 1937.
Fall Winter ’19 is an ode to Milan that, for the past eight decades, has influenced the brand’s evolution: a sophisticated milieu that has historically been Italy’s creative and industrial hub and that has seen a new renaissance in recent years.
The collection is also inspired by the 50s and 60s, enlightened years when designers, architects, intellectuals and entrepreneurs gravitated across Northern Italy, driving dramatic innovations, both aesthetic and practical. It was also a time when Italian cinema with international celebrities came to the spotlight and a new lifestyle emerged as a consequence of increased mobility and connectivity.
Celebrated designs of those years, such as Olivetti Lettera 22 typewriters, Fiat 500 cars and Carlo Ratti’s two-tone chairs, inspire this season’s sophisticated colour palette: pergamena white, rust, military green, smokey light blue, petrol blue, rosewood brown, and bi-colour black and pergamena white. Multiple leathers enrich the collection: crocodile and python skins are added to Valextra’s well-known martellato and shiny smooth calf skins.
For Fall Winter 2019, Valextra bonds past and present, re-launching the legendary SerieS.
Taking cues from traditional doctor bags, the original SerieS featured an asymmetrically-cut trapeze shape, an off-centre handle engineered for easier carrying and a double compartment inside, to fit both business documents and a change of clothes. Created with a male clientele in mind, the business travellers of the 1960s, SerieS favoured a sober, practical elegance. Following its success, in 1969 the line was extended to include a women’s version, playing with size and proportions, while keeping most of the aesthetic values intact.
Designed in 1960, the bag is characterized by soft, rounded lines influenced by the trend in design of those years, where more organic shapes became popular: legendary rounded car models (from the VW Beetle, to the exclusive Mercedes SL Gullwing to Fiat 500), but also furniture designs – pieces including Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe’s iconic chaise longue, the Paulistano chair by Brazilian architect, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, and Marco Zanuso’s sinuous Lady Chair.
Today, SerieS has been revised in proportion and construction and embellished with personalized zip pullers in shiny metal inspired by the pure geometrics of Carlo Scarpa – the double circle motif of the Tomba Brion and the asymmetrical geometry of the architect’s interiors.
The Fall Winter ’19 collection also showcases some of Valextra’s most iconic contemporary designs, presented in new iterations: new travel versions of the Iside, in a maxi format with a large pocket and Maxi Passepartout.
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