Why The ‘We’re Not Really Strangers’ X Valentino Card Game Is A Wake-Up Call For All Of Us

While chilling out in my living room after work one evening, I wondered “What’s next?” to myself cos things were getting quite dull since the MCO extension had just been announced. In the past year, I’ve come realise that no matter what I tried doing virtually, nothing excited me because as an extrovert, human interactions and face-to-face meetings mattered to me – A LOT. That same night, my friend Claire, who I haven’t chatted with for years, asked me if I’d like to catch up with her and surprisingly, I found myself saying yes despite having rejected such requests from most people on many occasions in the past few months – so you know what that means.

It was during this chat that she asked me if I’ve heard about the latest, limited-edition ‘We’re Not Really Strangers’ X Valentino card game which everyone was talking about. Coincidentally, I have. In fact, the first thing that got me attracted to this deck was the idea behind it, as empathy, individuality and positivity were its main cornerstones that reflected the shared values between both brands.

In all honesty, I assumed that with everyone having to isolate themselves from one another, empathy was the last thing that people cared about in today’s context, but I was clearly wrong. Made up of 25 cards sealed in a red box with a special collaborative design on the signature ‘V’ logo, each card comes with a question that’s not only meant to be a conversation starter but also to let us reflect on the answers as we go along. As Claire is an introvert and the total opposite of me, we decided to attempt three questions from the sneak peeks that were available online:

Question 1: What are you trying to understand about yourself?

Question 2: Who in your life can you have more empathy towards? What’s getting in the way of that?

Question 3: What would you tell yourself one year ago?

It was only after both of us had answered the last question and exchanged compliments (it was part of the game) that I started to feel like this was the wake-up call I needed all along. A little reminder about my goals and passion was just the kick I needed, and this deck of cards was surprisingly able to do just that!

At the same time, I also realised that a good chat on ‘deep’ topics is what some of us might need – especially during a lockdown. More often than not, these simple questions are ones that we’d never think of asking our friends on a ‘normal’ day unless prompted by something or someone. As Koreen Odiney, the founder of ‘We’re Not Really Strangers’ shares with Pierpaolo Piccioli, the Creative Director of Valentino in a video, “The true form of empathy is when we see ourselves in someone else.”

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The next step for me was to thank Claire for reaching out to me and having the long-overdue catch-up sesh – and to make a mental note of getting this deck of cards for myself. Rest assured, it’ll be a useful set for me in the future to get to know more people on a deeper level and get them to open up about their bottled-up thoughts, feelings, goals and passions the way I did.

FUN FACT! When you shorten We’re Not Really Strangers to WNRS, it’s pronounced as “winners”.‍

The ‘We’re Not Really Strangers’ X Valentino card set is a limited-edition release that’s available in selected Valentino boutiques around the world. To get yours, visit Valentino.com.