Dakota Johnson has officially joined the Valentino family – and her first campaign is already breaking the internet. The Fifty Shades of Grey star fronts the fashion house’s Cruise 2026 collection, captured through the lens of creative director Alessandro Michele, who recently took charge of Valentino’s new era. In the campaign shot, shared by Valentino’s official handle, Johnson lies on the floor in a fiery red chiffon mini-dress worth $9,900, phone in hand, exuding what can only be described as glamour.
The caption, “Intimacy in frame,” sums up the mood perfectly – a quiet, cinematic moment that somehow feels intimate yet impossibly styled.
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Dakota Johnson’s $9,900 dress defines effortless luxury
The red chiffon dress – a Valentino signature – features an off-the-shoulder neckline, delicate waist cutouts and subtle knotted details that give it structure without taking away from its lightness. The piece balances sensuality with ease, something Dakota Johnson has long been known to embody in her fashion choices.
Her look is completed with white patterned tights, loose waves and a minimalist no-makeup look that gives the whole shot an easy vibe. Blue heels and a black Panthea bag rest nearby.
Fans online could not get enough. “She makes red look calm,” one commenter wrote under Valentino’s post. Another added, “No one does quiet luxury like Dakota.”
“This dress and bag combo is perfect,” wrote a viewer.
Valentino’s ‘Nocturne’ moment
The campaign falls under Valentino’s “Nocturne” theme, which the brand describes as a moment that “inhabits a suspended threshold where sleep and wake become porous. It happens in a hotel, a liminal space par excellence, where intimacy and anonymity coexist and transience turns into permanence.”
Directed by Renell Medrano and photographed by Marili Andre, the campaign captures this pervasive repetition of isolated gestures. “It’s the threshold where, as Freud would say, dream begins to think for us. A world that, for a fleeting instant, allowed itself to sleep together,” the official description further reads.
