Bottega Veneta returns to reflect on the intimacy of dreams with “What Are Dreams,” a short film and photographic series by Duane Michals, starring Jacob Elordi. A project that intertwines languages and generations, where visual art meets poetry and fashion becomes a vehicle for introspection. Shot in Michals’s New York home and filmed entirely in black and white, “What Are Dreams” is a journey into the unconscious, a composition suspended between the real and the impossible. The photographer’s eye, always drawn to Surrealism, constructs a narrative of symbols and apparitions: a curtain blowing in the wind, a convex mirror, a feather suspended in the void. Objects that lose their function to become signs, evocations, fragments of a poetic language nourished by mystery and melancholy.
In the twelve images that make up the series, Michals portrays Jacob Elordi as a suspended presence, almost an alter ego of the artist himself. The young actor moves through the spaces of the house as if in a lucid dream, immersed in an atmosphere reminiscent of the metaphysical architecture of Giorgio de Chirico and the enigmatic visions of René Magritte.
he short film accompanying the campaign features the poem “What Are Dreams,” written by Michals himself and published in 2001 in the book Questions Without Answers. “Midnight movies of the mind… where things seem familiar, but not quite the same”: with this reflection, Michals invites us to look within ourselves, to the place where reality merges with desire. The words, handwritten by the author, also appear in the photographs, intertwining visual and poetic language into a single, refined narrative. With “What Are Dreams,” Bottega Veneta renews its connection with visual culture and artistic research. A dialogue that spans time: Michals had previously collaborated with the Maison in 1985, while Jacob Elordi, appointed Brand Ambassador in May 2024, now embodies the brand’s new sensibility. The result is a tale about the enigma of dreams and the power of imagination—a celebration of vision as an act of freedom, where fashion becomes, once again, a way of thinking.
Foto: DUANE MICHALS x Bottega Veneta
