Valentino L'École Brings Feminine Assertiveness to New York City
Valentino's L'École campaign is a Spring/Summer 2024 film and image series shot in New York City by photographer duo Mert & Marcus, starring newly appointed brand ambassadors Jolin Tsai, Son Ye-jin, and Kaia Gerber, and conceived under Creative Director Pierpaolo Piccioli to celebrate feminine assertiveness and cultural individuality across the United States and global luxury markets.
The campaign launched on 19 February 2024, coinciding with the arrival of the Spring/Summer 2024 collection in Valentino boutiques and on Valentino.com. Its release followed the collection's runway presentation, which took place in October 2023 at a Beaux-Arts school in Paris, as reported by CR Fashion Book and Lifestyle Asia. In the United States, the campaign arrived at a moment when luxury fashion houses were recalibrating their ambassador strategies to reflect broader cultural representation, and Valentino's decision to unite a Taiwanese pop icon, a South Korean actress, and an American model in a single campaign framework signalled a deliberate departure from Eurocentric casting conventions.
The three talents — Jolin Tsai, Son Ye-jin, and Kaia Gerber — carry the designation #ValentinoDiVas, a title the Maison introduced alongside the campaign to frame each ambassador as an archetype of individual power rather than a uniform brand face. The production unfolded high above Manhattan at 7 World Trade Center, a setting that layers civic monumentality with the campaign's themes of emancipation and feminine reappropriation of space. Creative Director Pierpaolo Piccioli described the campaign's intent directly, stating that L'École is, in his words, a story of feminine assertiveness, a reappropriation of the body, and an ode to its beauty, as documented by modelsblog.info and Document Journal. The ValentinoLÉcole hashtag anchored the campaign's social identity, connecting the editorial film assets — three in total — to the broader #ValentinoDiVas conversation across digital platforms in the United States and internationally.
Valentino selected Jolin Tsai, Son Ye-jin, and Kaia Gerber as the first-choice talents for L'École, according to modelsblog.info, CR Fashion Book, and Lifestyle Asia. The choice is strategically coherent rather than ornamental. Each ambassador commands a distinct cultural geography — Taiwanese popular music, Korean prestige cinema, and American modelling — allowing a single campaign to function simultaneously as a domestic United States statement and as a multilingual signal to East and Southeast Asian luxury consumers, whose engagement with Italian fashion houses has grown substantially over the preceding decade.
The global luxury apparel market contracted by approximately two point four percent in 2024, reflecting inflationary pressure in Europe and the United States alongside weaker Chinese luxury spending, according to GlobalData. Within that environment, brands competing for share — including Louis Vuitton, which held approximately nine point eight percent of global luxury apparel in 2024 per GlobalData, and Hermès, which held approximately six point zero percent while gaining ground — were each navigating the tension between heritage positioning and contemporary cultural relevance. Gucci, a direct peer in the Italian luxury category, reported revenue of approximately €7.65 billion in 2024, representing a decline of approximately twenty-three percent year over year, as reported by GlobalData, making the period one of meaningful competitive pressure across the segment.
Against this backdrop, Valentino's L'École strategy reads as a deliberate act of brand differentiation through human capital. Rather than anchoring the campaign to a single global face or a product-forward narrative, Pierpaolo Piccioli assembled a triptych of ambassadors whose combined cultural reach exceeded any single market. As reported by The Impression in February 2024, the campaign blended a sense of nostalgia and nowness, invoking late-1990s fashion sensibilities while maintaining a visual language legible to contemporary luxury consumers in the United States and across Asia. The ValentinoDiVas framework also extended the campaign's shelf life beyond a single season, establishing an ambassador architecture the Maison could activate repeatedly across channels.
Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott photographed the L'École campaign at 7 World Trade Center in New York City. The choice of location carries weight beyond logistics. Shooting high above lower Manhattan places each ambassador — Jolin Tsai, Son Ye-jin, and Kaia Gerber — in a visual environment defined by vertical ambition and civic scale, qualities that reinforce the campaign's thematic axis of feminine assertiveness and emancipation, as articulated by Pierpaolo Piccioli and documented by modelsblog.info and Document Journal.
Pierpaolo Piccioli served as Creative Director, and the campaign's visual identity reflects his sustained interest in fluid silhouettes, lightweight garments, and artisanal craft. CR Fashion Book and Elle reported that the Spring/Summer 2024 collection featured Altorilievo embroidery, a raised relief technique associated with Valentino's couture atelier, which appears across the campaign's wardrobe as a counterpoint to the airy, movement-oriented silhouettes that define the season's ready-to-wear line. The tension between craft density and physical lightness is a consistent Piccioli formal device, and L'École extends it into a New York City context with deliberate geographic symbolism.
Art Director Lina Kutsovskaya shaped the campaign's compositional identity, while Stylist Joe McKenna constructed the looks across three distinct talent profiles without flattening their individual character into a uniform aesthetic. Hair Stylist Paul Hanlon, Makeup Artist Diane Kendal, and Manicurist Jin Soon Choi completed the creative team, each contributing to a grooming language that CR Fashion Book described as calibrated to each ambassador's individual presence rather than a single house code. The campaign delivered three film and image assets, each centred on a single ambassador, producing a modular content architecture that allowed the Maison to activate Jolin Tsai, Son Ye-jin, and Kaia Gerber separately across social channels while maintaining visual coherence across the ValentinoLÉcole campaign body as a whole.
No independently verified performance data for the Valentino L'École campaign is publicly available beyond platform-level engagement figures recorded at the time of archiving. The campaign's individual film assets accumulated a combined view count of approximately 6,234 and 184 likes across the documented submission period, figures that reflect archival snapshot data rather than full campaign reach across Valentino's owned channels, paid media, and earned coverage in the United States and internationally.
Structurally, L'École demonstrates several conditions associated with durable luxury campaign effectiveness. The three-ambassador architecture distributes cultural reach across distinct markets without requiring the brand to localise separately. The 7 World Trade Center production location provides a recognisable New York City landmark that anchors the campaign's American market identity while projecting internationally. The Mert & Marcus partnership brings a photographer relationship with sustained luxury-fashion credibility, and the Lina Kutsovskaya art direction sustains compositional consistency across three independent talent films. Pierpaolo Piccioli's stated thematic framework — feminine assertiveness, bodily reappropriation, individuality — gives the campaign a conceptual throughline that extends beyond seasonal product promotion, as noted by The Impression and CR Fashion Book.
Clapboard rates Valentino L'École at 63 out of 100. The score reflects strong creative team credentials, a coherent strategic rationale, and a well-constructed ambassador framework, offset by the campaign's relatively modest documented engagement volume and the absence of a verifiable performance narrative connecting campaign activity to commercial outcomes for the Spring/Summer 2024 collection in the United States or globally.
Valentino named Jolin Tsai, Son Ye-jin, and Kaia Gerber as the ambassadors for the L'École Spring/Summer 2024 campaign. Each carries the ValentinoDiVas designation. The three were selected by Creative Director Pierpaolo Piccioli as first-choice talents, according to modelsblog.info and CR Fashion Book, representing Taiwanese, South Korean, and American cultural audiences respectively.
The L'École campaign was shot at 7 World Trade Center in New York City. Photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott captured each ambassador high above Manhattan. The United States location was central to the campaign's visual identity, pairing New York City's civic scale with Pierpaolo Piccioli's themes of feminine assertiveness and emancipation.
Valentino launched the L'École campaign on 19 February 2024. The release coincided with the Spring/Summer 2024 collection's arrival in boutiques and on Valentino.com. The collection itself had been presented earlier, in October 2023 at a Beaux-Arts school in Paris, as reported by CR Fashion Book and Lifestyle Asia.
Pierpaolo Piccioli served as Creative Director for L'École. He described the campaign as a story of feminine assertiveness and an ode to the body's beauty, per modelsblog.info and Document Journal. Art Director Lina Kutsovskaya and Stylist Joe McKenna completed the core creative leadership alongside photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott.
Clapboard rates Valentino L'École at 63 out of 100. The score reflects strong credentials across the creative team and a coherent ambassador strategy, balanced against limited publicly documented engagement metrics and the absence of verified data connecting the campaign to commercial results for the Spring/Summer 2024 collection in the United States.
ValentinoDiVas is the ambassador designation Valentino introduced alongside L'École to frame Jolin Tsai, Son Ye-jin, and Kaia Gerber as individual archetypes rather than interchangeable brand faces. The framework gave the campaign a modular structure, allowing the Maison to activate each ambassador separately across social platforms while maintaining visual coherence under the ValentinoLÉcole identity.
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