VACATION by Roope Rainisto

Context 

He’s back. We got our first sneak peek from Roope Rainisto’s upcoming Vacation collection (above), which is set to launch on Verse in May. 

Our take  

I’m writing this from my local Boulangerie Charme de Lune. I just told the lady sitting next to me that Roope is dropping another collection and all she gave me was a blank stare – no reaction at all. 

The poor thing hasn’t a clue, and clearly doesn’t read Mint or Skip. We’ve been talking about Roope since the newsletter began over a year ago. 

Here’s what we said about his first major collection, Life in West America, which we ranked in our Top 10 drops of 2023: 

Roope followed LIWA in April 2023 with Reworld, which didn’t quite hit the same high notes but was still a collector-favorite. Then he went on a few “side-quests”, such as Smile on Solana and an alignDRAW remix called Rainisto Variations on Verse. 

But now he’s returning to his roots with Vacation, which feels like a spiritual successor to LIWA and Reworld. Roope says this will be his main art collection of 2024, and that he’s been “labouring on this for over 6 months now”, so that’s enough for me to get hyped up. 

Anyway, back to the sneak peek above.

Roope’s signature natural landscapes and color palette are back, combined with floating ski lifts that hang like decorations on an invisible Christmas tree. 

The more you zoom in the more things start to fall apart. For example, orange jacket guy in the lower right corner has an extra set of knees that casually break in the opposite direction. 

This is Roope once again leaning into the imperfections of today’s AI generation. 

It’s fun because it’s honest. Like I said in the LIWA blurb, we’re just a few years away from always-perfect AI photography where these kinds of glitches will only show up when the artist makes the creative decision to “go back” to retro AI days. 

Today we’re in that brief window where those limitations are still there, and Roope is once again bringing that to our attention.