Dakota Johnson Stars in Her First Valentino Campaign, “Nocturno”

Dakota Johnson makes her debut as the new global ambassador for Valentino in the house’s first campaign under creative director Alessandro Michele, a poetic exploration of intimacy and quiet beauty titled “Nocturno.”

In the cinematic visuals for the Resort 2026 collection, captured by Marili Andre, Johnson appears in a dreamlike hotel setting alongside a diverse ensemble that includes legendary actress and model Marisa Berenson, Canadian singer and dancer Tate McRae, British musician Dev Hynes, German artist Anne Imhof, and American ballet dancer Devon Teuscher. Together, they inhabit a world caught between wakefulness and sleep — a realm Michele describes as “the suspended threshold where everything softens, and consciousness prepares to surrender.”

“There’s a moment, just before night falls, when the boundaries between dreaming and waking blur,” Michele explained. “In that in-between space, light stops judging, words lose their weight, and the world exhales. The ‘Nocturno’ campaign lives in that silence.”

Set entirely inside a hotel — “the ultimate liminal space,” as Michele calls it — the campaign captures scenes of tender solitude: figures stretched across beds, curled up on floors, reading, eating, or simply resting in the hush of twilight. The hotel becomes a metaphor for modern life — a place of proximity without contact, where parallel solitudes breathe the same air, separated only by thin walls.

The melancholic atmosphere deepens in the accompanying short film, directed by Renell Medrano, with Frédéric Chopin’s “Nocturne in E-flat Major” performed by Angus Pendergast as its haunting soundtrack. Johnson is seen zipping up a Valentino gown before lying on the floor, phone in hand — perhaps, as the campaign teases, speaking to Michele himself.

“Nothing brings me more joy than collaborating with people I love, admire, and respect,” Johnson told WWD. “I’m beyond grateful to join the Valentino family. Alessandro is one of the most inspiring people I know, and it’s an honor to work with him again.”

The actress’s appointment as Valentino’s global ambassador, announced last month, marks a new chapter in her long creative friendship with Michele, dating back to his time at Gucci.

With “Nocturno,” Michele expands on the imagery first introduced in the Resort 2026 lookbook — where his eclectic cast was depicted lounging on beds, playing guitar, solving crosswords, or taking selfies — now elevated into a nocturnal meditation on vulnerability and human connection. Johnson joins a growing list of Valentino ambassadors, including Clairo, Sophie Thatcher, Freen Sarocha, Jeff Satur, Lim Yoona, and Colman Domingo, who recently became the face of Valentino Beauty’s fragrance lines as well.