Valentino "Avant les Débuts" Resort 2025 Ad Campaign

Review of Valentino “Avant les Débuts” Resort 2025 Ad Campaign by Creative Director Alessandro Michele and Art Director Christopher Simmonds with Photographer Glen Luchford and models Isadora Ribeiro, Awèng Malou, Harry Browse, Sung Young, Sophie Dominique Gonzalez, Savva Podolski, and Vera Lemelehes

The genesis of the Alessandro Michele era at Valentino continues to take shape with the launch of the creative director’s first campaign. Highlighting the Resort 2025 collection “Avant les Débuts,” which formed Michele’s surprise debut, the campaign sees him reunite with art director Christopher Simmonds and photographer Glen Luchford, who helped to shape his vision at Gucci.

Celebrating the eternal yet ever-changing glamor of Valentino’s home of Rome, the campaign draws inspiration from the maestro of Italian cinema Federico Fellini and his 1972 classic Roma while bringing us back into the familiar Michele-verse. Heiresses, cinema princesses, muses of all sorts dressed in lavish, era-hopping wardrobes occupy the famed Palazzo Gabrielli-Mignanelli – which, in addition to being the brand’s current headquarters, attests to a rich history of providing a home for both Roman aristocracy and clergy. Now, it takes shape once again as a venue for festive decadence.

The accompanying short film ups the drama and indulgence, pairing a vintage cinematographic feel with the Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem while treating us to details of light glinting off crystal drinkware, pugs wearing pearl necklaces, and flashes of connection in queer romance.

The campaign is sumptuous, beautifully realized, and transports us fully into a distinct aesthetic world. This world, however, is one that we feel like we’ve been in before; it’s undeniably quite similar to Michele’s work at Gucci.

But is that necessarily a bad thing at all? Michele’s tenure at Gucci was so instantly iconic because he had a unique and refreshing point of view. While he played on vintage tropes and leaned into a contemporary spirit of gender fluidity (which has since unfortunately become less in-focus in luxury fashion at large), what he was doing was also so different from what everyone else was doing, and fully himself.

The challenge, then, is to balance the irrepressible fashion force that is Alessandro Michele with the recognition that we still need Valentino to be Valentino, that this is a brand with heritage, history, and an image that need to be honored. One major way in which Michele has recognized this balance is in making Rome the central aspect of the campaign, and that was a very wise move to ground his vision in a place that has its own history and connections with the maison.

Moving forward, however, it may be a bigger challenge to incorporate Valentino’s identity further into the narrative, concept, and collection itself – the latter of which may be a real test, as Valentino arguably has a less broad and iconic design lexicon to draw on than does Gucci.

But if anyone is the right person for that job, it’s probably Alessandro Michele. He’s found his iconic vision of liberated decadence a new home in Rome, and we can’t wait to see how he evolves the legacy of Valentino.