Amongst Valentino’s Spring/Summer 2015 collection, the MIME Collection particularly stands out with its gorgeous pieces inspired by baroque travel. This collection was conceptualized by Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli, who were inspired by the 18th century tradition of the Grand Tour, an educational trip taken by cultured young Europeans to explore the art, philosophy and traditions of Italy.

The MIME collection features a series of foulard prints depicting stories of old, called the Blossom, Leaf, Flower Eyes, Arabesque, and Flower Dot.

Each of these foulard prints displays a different color scheme and is created with a single print or a patchwork of these prints. The floral printed patchwork leather and the stunning kaleidoscope effect that is achieved truly sets this collection apart from anything I’ve seen in quite some time.

The bags are presented as a printed leather patchwork. The leather panels are printed with a digital technique and then the designs are combined together like a patchwork on the different bags. The same is for the shoes: each shoe style is different from the other as every component of the shoe represents a different print.

Bags and shoes branch off from these founding prints, which come in five rich and distinctive colourways.  This stunning new collection brings exquisite detail from ancient times giving the appearance of timeless, and injects it with a modern twist for Spring/Summer 15.

A once time purchase forever , but words don’t really seem to do justice to this intriguing collection, so I’ll leave you with a video which you can see below.

Discover more about the mesmerising prints from MIME by Valentino here.