Valentino has collaborated with the artist Sara Ludy to create an exclusive NFT digital artwork piece titled “Astral Garden” through Valentino Insights. No stranger to the virtual world, Valentino Insights is the fashion brand’s virtual reality environment created by the start-up Vertual. Now, they are opening their (online) doors to the Valentino Roman Palazzo Art Residency for the world to view.

This online platform is based on the lifestyle of designer Pierpaolo Piccioli and has several different rooms to explore. The first room is dedicated to NFT artworks, so that is where you’ll find Ludy’s “Astral Garden,” created exclusively for Valentino. Through this piece, Ludy interpreted the new Valentino Roman Palazzo collection and aimed to create a hybrid digital world, connecting the virtual with reality. The work of art has been auctioned off and sold on the Foundation website for 5.4 E, or around $18,000.

Valentino made additional strides in the virtual reality realm earlier this year by opening the Valentino Episode SoHo boutique in June 2021 to feature an exhibition of NFT digital artworks by artist Matthew Stone. Among other designers, it’s clear that Valentino isn’t leaving the virtual reality world any time soon.

“We’re in this time where our physical and virtual lives have collapsed and we experience this hybrid reality where our lives are mediated by digital technologies, and I’m interested in what happens out of this collapse, what rises, how this hybrid reality expands and contracts our sense of being and connection,” Ludy said. “Astral garden references this hybrid space in how it moves from one digital dimension to the other – from VR to 3D space to 2D space, and back. The process is like weaving fabric with all of these textures and experiences. It becomes a multidimensional material. The piece is this multidimensional scroll reflecting on the collapse of nature and simulation.”

Hailing from New Mexico, Ludy works to combine nature, being, and simulation in her art. She is currently represented by bitforms gallery, and some of her exhibitions have been in the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and more. Her art has also been featured in the New York Times, Modern Painters, Cultured Magazine, and more.

Check out the Valentino Insights virtual world and Ludy’s artwork here.