The internal rhythm

Why do we mark time so carefully, as if growth could be scheduled or neatly divided into years and milestones? We measure, compare, and compartmentalize, yet each life unfolds according to its own internal rhythms. Every flower blooms in its own time, not at the calendar’s urging. Time may help us orient ourselves, but it rarely captures how intelligence, creativity, and ideas truly evolve.

The octopus offers a revealing perspective. Despite its remarkably short lifespan, it reaches an advanced state of intelligence with extraordinary speed. Highly sentient and deeply adaptive, it quickly learns through observation and experimentation, transforming itself in direct dialogue with its environment.

This way of thinking lies at the heart of POLPO, our new collection presented in Paris last week. Paris has long been a place where ideas gather, collide, and take form, and it was there that Mariano Fortuny’s own creative intelligence was first shaped before continuing its evolution in Venice. POLPO returned this conversation to Paris, not as a point on a timeline, but as part of an ongoing dialogue between past and present, nature and invention.

In this spirit, the collection reflects Fortuny’s founding approach, a practice rooted in passionate curiosity and close observation of the natural world, sustained through experimentation and refinement. His fascination with light and the arts informed his work across disciplines, shaping an understanding of beauty defined not by pace or chronology, but by attention and mastery. Like our founder, and the octopus itself, the new collection reveals its depth gradually, quietly reminding us that the most enduring ideas are not bound or measured by time, but move freely to find their shape within it.