Alessandro Michele’s First Valentino Campaign Explores Parallel Solitudes

Alessandro Michele’s vision for Cruise 2026 focuses on the shared ritual of loosening the tensions of the day.

Summary

• The campaign features Dakota Johnson, Marisa Berenson, Dev Hynes, Anne Imhof, Tate McRae, and Devon Teuscher in isolated yet shared rituals before night.
• It examines the contemporary condition of proximity without contact, where private moments form a collective intimacy.

The Valentino Cruise 2026 campaign, titled “Nocturne,” inhabits a specific moment: the time just before the night comes, when the borders of sleep and wake become porous. It is a suspended threshold where things get soft and, as Alessandro Michele suggests, “conscience prepares to surrender.”

The setting is a hotel. This location functions as a liminal space, where intimacy and anonymity coexist, and transience turns into a form of permanence. Inside, each room is a fragment of the universe, populated by singular existences. The campaign observes these lives, which barely touch one another, taking part in a shared ritual.

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The inhabitants of these rooms include Marisa Berenson, Dev Hynes, Anne Imhof, Dakota Johnson, Tate McRae, and Devon Teuscher. They are captured in the gesture of loosening the tensions of the day, embracing the quiet as a temporary shelter from the world outside.The private transfigures into a shared experience. Michele positions the hotel as a metaphor for the contemporary condition. It is a place of proximity without contact.”

The hotel becomes a metaphor for the contemporary condition: a place of proximity without contact, where parallel solitudes breathe within the same time and thoughts intertwine through thin walls,” Michele explains. It is a human hive, where every cell preserves the prelude of a dream.

CREDITS

Creative Director: Alessandro Michele
Director: Renell Medrano
DOP: Jack Exton
Photographer: Marili Andre
Art Director: Christopher Simmonds
Stylist: Jonathan Kaye
Set Designer: Victoria Salomoni
Make up Artist: Yadim Carranza
Hair: Esther Langham
Nails: Lauren Michelle Pires
Choreographer: Joe Grey Adams

TALENTS

Marisa Berenson
Dev Hynes
Anne Imhof
Dakota Johnson
Tate McRae
Devon Teuscher