La Dolce Vita
Review of Tod’s Fall 2026 Ad Campaign by Creative Directors Kevin Tekinel and Charles Levai and Photographer Alasdair McLellan with models Mona Tougaard, Libby Taverner, Hedi Ben Tekaya, and Anatol Modzelewski
Tod’s returns to its ongoing Italian Stories narrative for Fall 2026, with creative directors Kevin Tekinel and Charles Levai and photographer Alasdair McLellan retreating to the verdant grounds of Villa San Martino in northern Italy. Featuring Mona Tougaard, Libby Taverner, Hedi Ben Tekaya, and Anatol Modzelewski, the campaign translates the house’s familiar vocabulary of Italian ease into a portrait of country-house life that feels polished without becoming overly precious.
McLellan’s imagery leans into the fantasy of an unhurried afternoon among friends. A burgundy vintage sports car doubles as an impromptu picnic table, complete with fruit, drinks, and silverware, while the cast gathers around it in softly coordinated shades of cream, taupe, gray, and brown. The composition has the casual choreography of a candid photograph, though every detail—from the car’s gleaming bodywork to the immaculate lawn—quietly reinforces the world of cultivated taste Tod’s is selling. Elsewhere, Mona Tougaard settles into the villa’s interiors in a generous white knit, leather skirt, and knee-high boots, with the T Signature bag held prominently but naturally against her body.
There is a distinctly cinematic quality to this vision of Italian leisure, one that works especially well for Tod’s. McLellan has long excelled at making aspirational environments feel inhabited rather than staged, and here his warm, tactile photography softens the campaign’s considerable luxury. Tamburini’s clothes follow the same logic: relaxed tailoring, enveloping outerwear, supple leather, and understated neutrals communicate wealth through material and proportion rather than obvious spectacle. The products belong convincingly to the characters and their surroundings rather than appearing parachuted into them.
That restraint is both the campaign’s strength and its most familiar element. The codes of the Italian good life—villa, vintage car, manicured landscape, beautiful friends with nowhere urgent to be—are well established territory for luxury fashion, and the concept itself offers few surprises. Yet Tod’s has little need to manufacture novelty when its strongest proposition is precisely this sense of permanence. Details such as the Di Bag, T Signature bag, hand-finished Metal Dots loafer, and Pashmy suede pieces give the fantasy a material foundation, connecting lifestyle imagery back to the house’s emphasis on craft.
Italian Stories ultimately succeeds by making refinement look pleasantly uneventful. There are no grand gestures here, just good clothes, beautiful objects, an enviable address, and enough fruit balanced on a sports car to suggest nobody is particularly worried about the upholstery. For Tod’s, that may be the most convincing definition of luxury of all.
Tod’s Creative Director | Matteo Tamburini
Creative Directors | Kevin Tekinel and Charles Levai
Photographer | Alasdair McLellan
Models | Mona Tougaard, Libby Taverner, Hedi Ben Tekaya, and Anatol Modzelewski
Stylist | Beat Bolliger
Location | Villa San Martino