Valentino Narratives

Creative director, Pierpaolo Piccioli of Valentino dives into the world of literature. This is the reimagining of how fashion communicates, positioning Valentino as a leader in text-driven campaigns. It’s a very clever campaign as fashion and the works of art that are created with clothing is a means of self expression and storytelling, but why not pair it up with the physical words? 

They have done two iterations of this, and the way this works is by hand picking a diverse group of authors to write a short piece under a theme. As well as partnering with Penguin Random House to share a few books before their publication. The first campaign was released in 2021 as the company partnered with Belletrist, a social media community of readers run by creative consultant Karah Preiss and the actress Emma Roberts. For Valentino Narratives II the theme was “love,” which was released on World Poetry Day. With critically proclaimed writers like: Pulitzer prize winner Andrew Sean Greer, New York Times bestseller Brit Bennett, American humorist David Sedaris, and American queer activist Alok Vaid-Menon to name a few. 

The first time I heard of this was from Booktuber, Jack Edwards, in a YouTube video where he is doing a book haul but at the beginning there was a Valentino ad for their words only campaign. Instantly, as a book lover and enthusiast myself, I was intrigued. Not only that, but really enjoying editorial and graphic design being able to appreciate the level of detail each poster and piece of writing like the works of art they are.  

This is a great marketing campaign as it also pulls in a new target audience, readers but keeps the current market they sell for intrigued and on their toes due to their creativity. 

The Narratives campaign is brilliant in more ways than I can count. But they also used this new house code as a campaign for their Men’s Spring/Summer 2024 collection theme and fashion show invitations.