BORBONESE’S SPRING-SUMMER 2024 COLLECTION: LA GALLERIA

Images courtesy of Borbonese

Flash Art inside Palazzo Durini in Milan, a city’s beacon for contemporary art, brings the dialogue between the luxury handbag brand and the art world a step forward. Dorian Tarantini and Matteo Mena’s creations for Borbonese are sneaking into the rooms of the storied Palazzo Durini bringing along their clashing approach to the heritage of the brand, one imbued with sophistication and irreverence, legacy and modernity.

As artworks hanging from trees and the ceiling of the multistory palazzo, replete with a Koi carp-inhabited pond and a brutalist underground pool, Borbonese’s spring/summer 2024 accessories establish a dialogue with the space, itself a clashing juxtaposition of bourgeois and avant-garde codes, customized for the event with OP detailing, and the artworks of Ambra Castagnetti, a leading Italian female artist represented by Galleria Francesca Minini and selected by the brand with Flash Art.

Her young voice on femininity and feminism, sustainability, corporeality and mutation, and the tension between humanity and nature, which gained her a spotlight at the 2022 Venice Biennale art exhibition titled “The Milk of Dreams,” is channeled into hybrid sculptures, videos, installations and performances interlacing poetry and politics, reality and fiction.

Triggered by the artist’s lexicon, along the Milky Way of their progressive creative journey for Borbonese, Dorian Tarantini and Matteo Mena lingered over the brand’s contrasts and frictions. The century-old archives of Borbonese serves as the launchpad for the collection’s multi-sided soul.

Presented by Som Santoso

The collection’s icon and a new addition to the brand’s vocabulary, the “La Nido” bag nods to the Luna style, first designed in 1969 to celebrate the moon landing and a testament to the brand’s revolutionary spirit.

Crocheted, sustainably minded, recycled fabric – overprinted with Borbonese’s signature OP pattern or in solid colorways – is worked into a gently sinuous and invitingly rounded shape, soft and oversized, with the metallic snap-hook serving as the only hard-edged accent.

The “Capri” lineup is a souvenir from the early Aughts, with its mini shape, playful colors, including a cold pink nuance, and laid-back attitude. Crafted from recycled nylon and calfskin, it features the signature stirrup hardware rendered in a matte and tonal version. The “Lover” range offers yet another interpretation to the hobo Luna bag, in recycled fabric drenched in aquatic shades with oversized knots sustaining the shoulder strap.

A journey inside the codes of Borbonese, the spring/summer exhibition distills and showcases old and new facets of the brand. Welcoming visitors in the courtyard of Flash Art, the “Heritage” collection in OP suede and OP coated canvas hangs from trees, speaking to the bourgeois roots of the house, with the “Oyster” marine-inspired hobo bag, the “Bucket Bag” and the original “Luna” design, displaying the foundations of Borbonese’s unbridled creative elan.

Borbonese’s “La Galleria” was exhibited at Flash Art inside Palazzo Durini from Sept. 21 to 24 with a wrap-up performance by Ambra Castagnetti.