Maison Valentino Turns Chinese New Year Into a Story of Shared Dreams
Maison Valentino's Chinese New Year 2026 campaign, titled "Dreams take shape in shared moments," is a fashion film published in Italy on January 8, 2026, starring Brand Ambassador Lareina Song and model Yi Fan, directed by Marcus Tang, and created under the creative direction of Alessandro Michele for the Valentino Cruise 2026 collection.
The campaign presents a story of togetherness and transformation set against the occasion of Lunar New Year 2026, the Year of the Horse. Rather than reach for surface-level festive spectacle, Maison Valentino grounds the narrative in intimacy: two figures inhabiting a dimly lit interior, their interaction unfolding with the quiet weight of a shared possibility. The promise of renewal, central to every Lunar New Year, becomes in this context something personal rather than ceremonial. Per Valentino's own published campaign description, the creative intent is to show how "the promise of possibility shines through" in moments of human connection, a positioning that places emotional resonance at the centre of the brand's seasonal strategy.
In Italy, where Valentino operates as one of the country's most internationally recognised luxury houses, the campaign extends the brand's ongoing effort to build meaningful equity with Chinese consumers and the global diaspora who observe Lunar New Year. The film format — a single media asset — concentrates all creative energy into one sustained visual and emotional argument, earning the campaign a Clapboard Score of 68 out of 100. The zoetrope, a central visual device depicting a running horse, anchors the Year of the Horse symbolism in movement and cyclical transformation, as reported by ashadedviewonfashion.com and 10magazine.com, giving the film a material, tactile metaphor that complements the interiority of its human narrative.
Maison Valentino positions this campaign within a highly competitive segment of Italian fashion's global calendar. The Lunar New Year has become one of the most contested cultural moments in luxury advertising, with major houses including Gucci and Dior deploying significant creative resources each year to reach Chinese consumers both inside China and across global markets. Valentino's decision to lead with a Brand Ambassador of Lareina Song's standing — a prominent Chinese actress whose cultural familiarity with Lunar New Year audiences is native rather than adopted — reflects a strategic preference for authenticity over ornamentation.
The global luxury apparel market presents a structurally significant backdrop. According to IMARC Group, the global luxury apparel market is estimated at approximately 74.48 billion US dollars in 2026 and is forecast to reach approximately 116.41 billion US dollars by 2034, representing a compound annual growth rate of around 5.74 percent. Within this landscape, Italian fashion houses occupy a disproportionate share of consumer aspiration, and Valentino's positioning — as a top-tier Italian luxury brand operating below the scale of the largest conglomerate flagships — makes each campaign moment an exercise in precision rather than volume.
The choice to centre the campaign on shared, domestic intimacy rather than public celebration distinguishes Valentino's approach from competitors such as Saint Laurent and Burberry, whose Lunar New Year executions in recent cycles have leaned toward spectacle. Valentino instead narrows the frame, finding universality in the private moment. This mirrors a broader consumer insight, well-documented in luxury market analysis, that post-pandemic audiences respond more strongly to campaigns that render luxury as felt experience rather than displayed status. In Italy, where the house's design heritage carries specific cultural authority, that register of quiet confidence is especially legible to international press and buyers attending the Cruise 2026 cycle.
Alessandro Michele directs the creative vision of "Dreams take shape in shared moments" as Creative Director of Maison Valentino, bringing to the campaign the layered, literary sensibility that has defined his tenure. Marcus Tang directs the film itself, working within a visual language that favours suggestion over declaration: low light, close proximity between subjects, and a pacing that allows emotion to accumulate rather than announce itself. Julie Greve serves as campaign photographer, her still imagery extending the film's mood into a format that operates independently across editorial and digital contexts. Bianca Raggi serves as stylist, dressing Lareina Song and Yi Fan in pieces from the Valentino Cruise 2026 collection in a manner that makes the garments feel inhabited rather than displayed.
The music selection carries particular weight. The campaign soundtrack is "Future Perfect," written by Vini Reilly and performed by The Durutti Column, produced by Laurie Lexicon and published by Concord Copyrights, with the recording copyright held by Les Disques du Crepuscule and LTM dating to 1996, as documented in the campaign's official credits cited across valentino.com and adsoftheworld.com. The selection of a post-punk, post-industrial British recording from the 1990s to score a Chinese New Year campaign for an Italian house is a deliberate act of creative displacement: it asks the viewer to feel before they contextualise, allowing the emotional tone to lead the cultural specificity rather than the reverse.
The zoetrope device, reported by ashadedviewonfashion.com and vanityteen.com as a central visual element of the campaign, functions as both symbol and mechanism. A zoetrope produces the illusion of movement from a sequence of still images — a fitting metaphor for transformation as a process rather than an event, and for the Lunar New Year's promise of cyclical renewal. In the Year of the Horse, the running horse rendered inside the zoetrope becomes simultaneously an icon of the zodiac and an emblem of creative energy, connecting the Valentino Cruise 2026 collection to a much older vocabulary of motion and possibility.
Maison Valentino's "Dreams take shape in shared moments" campaign generated measurable early engagement across digital platforms following its January 8, 2026 publication. Per data cited by clapboard.com at the time of submission, the campaign film recorded approximately 4,912 views, 235 likes, and 43 comments, indicating a focused rather than mass-scale initial audience consistent with a luxury fashion release targeting culturally informed consumers and industry observers rather than broad entertainment audiences.
No verified third-party performance data quantifying sales impact, media reach, or earned media value for this campaign is publicly available at the time of writing. What the available engagement data does confirm is that the campaign achieved meaningful resonance within its primary channel without the amplification infrastructure of a paid mass-media buy — a structural choice that aligns with Valentino's positioning as a house that prizes editorial credibility over volume metrics.
The campaign earns a Clapboard Score of 68 out of 100. This score reflects the campaign's genuine creative ambition — the zoetrope device, the Durutti Column soundtrack, the casting of Lareina Song — balanced against the constraints of a single-asset format that limits the campaign's ability to build the kind of multi-touchpoint narrative depth that higher-scoring seasonal campaigns typically deploy. The emotional argument is coherent and the craft is demonstrably considered, but the campaign's reach relative to its creative investment remains, by the evidence available, modest. In the Italian luxury fashion market, where Valentino competes directly with Gucci and Prada for international cultural authority, the campaign registers as a thoughtful contribution to the Lunar New Year conversation rather than a definitive statement within it.
Maison Valentino's "Dreams take shape in shared moments" is a Chinese New Year 2026 fashion film centred on togetherness and transformation. Published in Italy on January 8, 2026, it stars Brand Ambassador Lareina Song and model Yi Fan, directed by Marcus Tang under Alessandro Michele's creative direction for the Valentino Cruise 2026 collection.
Valentino's Chinese New Year 2026 campaign features Lareina Song, a Chinese actress serving as Valentino Brand Ambassador, and model Yi Fan, also identified as Yifan Lv. Both were cast specifically to bring cultural authenticity to the Lunar New Year narrative built around the Valentino Cruise 2026 collection, as documented across valentino.com and adsoftheworld.com.
Marcus Tang directed the Valentino Lunar New Year 2026 film "Dreams take shape in shared moments." Alessandro Michele served as Creative Director, Julie Greve as campaign photographer, and Bianca Raggi as stylist. The production credits are documented by valentino.com and confirmed across ashadedviewonfashion.com and adsoftheworld.com.
The zoetrope in Valentino's Year of the Horse campaign depicts a running horse, symbolising movement, transformation, and cyclical renewal. As reported by ashadedviewonfashion.com and vanityteen.com, the device functions as a visual metaphor connecting the zodiac symbolism of the Year of the Horse to the Valentino Cruise 2026 collection's themes of possibility and shared experience.
Maison Valentino's 2026 Chinese New Year film uses "Future Perfect," written by Vini Reilly and performed by The Durutti Column. The track was produced by Laurie Lexicon and published by Concord Copyrights, with recording rights held by Les Disques du Crepuscule and LTM. The 1996 recording's selection is credited in full on valentino.com and adsoftheworld.com.
Valentino's "Dreams take shape in shared moments" campaign received a Clapboard Score of 68 out of 100. The score reflects strong creative craft, including the zoetrope device and Durutti Column soundtrack, balanced against the structural limitations of a single-asset format that constrains the campaign's overall narrative reach within the competitive Italian luxury fashion market.
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