Featured alongside a number of talented writers, best-selling author Fatima Farheen Mirza speaks to L'OFFICIEL about contributing to Valentino's new campaign and how words can express the feelings behind the fashion.

From the&nbsp;poetry booklet that accompanied its&nbsp;Fall/Winter 2019 collection to the recent collaboration with <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CKTOiz0IjJg/" target="_blank">We&#39;re Not Really Strangers</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion/valentino-haute-couture-spring-summer-2021-pierpaolo-piccioli-robert-del-naja" target="_blank">Valentino</a> has found engaging and thoughtful ways to synthesize the written word with fashion and the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion/valentino-pierpaolo-piccioli-shanghai-art-fashion-experience" target="_blank">visual&nbsp;arts.</a> Now, the house takes this admiration for cultural pursuits to the next level with the Valentino Collezione Milano Writers Campaign in which&nbsp;Creative Director Pierpaolo Piccioli&nbsp;invites&nbsp;a group of renowned authors to lend their creative voices to Valentino&#39;s newest text-only campaign. With words from&nbsp;Donna Tartt, Elif Shafak, Janet Mock, Lisa Taddeo, Matthew Lopez, Ocean Vuong, Yrsa Daley-Ward,&nbsp;Raven Leilani, and Fatima Farheen Mirza the initiative is open to literary interpretation with&nbsp;personal anecdotes and&nbsp;subtle nods to <a href="https://lofficielbaltics.com/en/fashion-week/punk-gesture-valentino-fall-2021-ready-to-wear" target="_blank">Valentino&#39;s</a> identity within popular culture and private life.&nbsp;Allusions to&nbsp;Valentino&#39;s signature <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion-week/valentino-pre-fall-2019" target="_blank">red</a> become aligned with&nbsp;empowering narratives, while the memory of various&nbsp;pieces&nbsp;of&nbsp;clothing define&nbsp;individual&nbsp;stories. The image-less&nbsp;campaign aims&nbsp;to challenge conventional ideas of how fashion is meant to communicate. During a moment in time where it is only natural to question and subvert long-lasting ideals, Valentino proves that fashion is not only an embodiment&nbsp;of <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion/spring-summer-2021-haute-couture-runway-fashion-trends-chanel-valentino-fendi" target="_blank">trends</a> but a method of storytelling.

Featuring imagined love letters and thought-provoking one-liners, the writers had creative freedom to interpret Valentino&#39;s Spring/Summer 2021 collection. For&nbsp;Fatima Farheen Mirza, the author of&nbsp;the best-selling&nbsp;novel&nbsp;A Place for Us, the condensed format of the campaign acted as a literary exercise. &ldquo;As a novelist, I loved the challenge of trying to write a micro-novel,&rdquo; the author tells L&rsquo;OFFICIEL. &ldquo;Constraints force you to go somewhere with the work you may not have otherwise, and let you try out a new voice or style. This year it&rsquo;s been my motto to go where the fear is. To write what I&rsquo;m most afraid to. I&rsquo;ve found that&rsquo;s where the growth is, and if not growth, then at least some understanding, or finding yourself in new, exciting territory.&rdquo;

For the campaign, Mirza&#39;s short story tells an intergenerational story of family and identity, weaving a Valentino scarf into it as an element that connects the present to the past.

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When considering how literature&nbsp;can enhance a visual medium such as&nbsp;fashion,&nbsp;Mirza feels that all creative practices are like &quot;paint colors on a palette [that]&nbsp;help you express yourself and articulate yourself authentically.&quot; She adds, &quot;What I love about using words is that they allow me to be precise, and to get at the feeling behind the visual, what an image or item might mean in the context of a person&rsquo;s life and history.&quot; As she wrote her contribution to the Collezione Milano Writers&nbsp;Campaign, Mirza found inspiration within <a href="https://www.lofficielarabia.com/fashion-week/the-valentino-spring-collection-is-a-surprise-that-is-already-lined-up" target="_blank">Valentino&#39;s latest collection</a>. &quot;I was drawn towards&nbsp;the pieces that had edge, bite, glitter, black, and bright red,&quot;&nbsp;Mirza says.&nbsp;&quot;I wanted the prose to hit like that, sharp, <a href="https://www.lofficiel.co.uk/beauty/the-new-valentino-bag-trends-2021" target="_blank">studded</a>.&quot;&nbsp;

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Mirza&#39;s sentiments connect with Valentino&#39;s mission of forging deep connections with clothing&nbsp;that transcend attractive materiality and design.&nbsp;The Collezione Milano Writers Campaign does exactly what Mirza so eloquently describes, it goes beyond the visual and situates the brand&nbsp;within the very important context of real life. <a href="https://www.lofficiel.co.uk/fashion-week/Valentino-Haute-Couture-spring-2021-all-the-look-collecion-pierpaolo-piccioli-rome" target="_blank">Valentino&#39;s</a> rich cultural history provides the perfect backdrop for this connection to occur. The stories which the respective writers share point to the profound power dressing as a window into&nbsp;personhood, memory, and passion.

Read through the campaign below:

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Valentino Celebrates the Written Word With Its First Text-Only Campaign

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