VALENTINO REVIVES VENDETTA WITH DAKOTA JOHNSON AND ALEXANDER SKARSGÅRD

Valentino Beauty has returned to one of the House’s most evocative fragrance names, and it has done so with a campaign that treats desire less as decoration than as a decision.

Vendetta arrives as a new fragrance duo — Vendetta Donna and Vendetta Uomo — and marks Valentino Beauty’s first Prestige fragrance franchise launch in six years. The name is deliberately familiar. It pays homage to the original Vendetta fragrance introduced in 1991 under Valentino Garavani, but the new chapter is conceived for a very different moment: one in which intimacy, emotion and instinct are placed back at the centre of the story.

Dakota Johnson and Alexander Skarsgård, both ambassadors of the House, become the faces of that idea. They appear not as polished strangers posed around a bottle, but as two lovers caught inside a private world of movement, tension and recognition.

A FILM BUILT ON INSTINCT

The campaign film, directed by Romain Gavras and shot on 35mm, follows the pair through sunlit landscapes, shadowed interiors and stretches of open road. The camera rarely settles. It moves with them, allowing intimacy to emerge through glances, touch and momentum rather than through any conventional declaration of romance.

The result has the texture of a short film rather than a traditional fragrance commercial. Johnson and Skarsgård appear to be escaping towards something rather than from it, moving through a world where desire feels at once reckless and strangely deliberate. Valentino’s signature red is used sparingly but decisively, becoming a visual thread through the campaign rather than simply a branding device.

The soundtrack is Pet Shop Boys’ “It’s a Sin”, a choice that gives the film an additional charge. Against the song’s familiar tension between desire and judgement, the campaign reframes passion as something to be chosen consciously — not apologised for, softened or made respectable.

Photographed by Inez & Vinoodh, the accompanying still imagery holds the same balance between glamour and emotional proximity. The images are highly controlled, but never cold. The couple is presented with the kind of directness that makes the campaign feel less like fantasy imposed from above and more like a private pact briefly made visible.

THE RETURN OF A NAME FROM 1991

The revival of Vendetta gives the launch a layer of history that goes beyond the campaign itself. Valentino first introduced a fragrance under the name in 1991, during the era of founder Valentino Garavani. The 2026 duo is not positioned as a literal reissue of that original composition; instead, the name becomes a bridge between the archive and a contemporary Valentino Beauty vocabulary.

That distinction matters. Luxury houses increasingly return to their archives, but the most convincing revivals do more than reproduce a familiar object. They recover an idea and allow it to speak in a new language. In this case, Vendetta is less about nostalgia than about emotional intensity: the notion of two distinct identities choosing the same direction.

Johnson and Skarsgård are especially effective in expressing that tension. Their campaign chemistry feels instinctive rather than theatrical, which suits a fragrance story built around connection without sentimentality. There is romance, certainly, but there is also something sharper in the way the pair is filmed — a sense that passion is not passive, and that intimacy can be an act of freedom.

VENDETTA DONNA: TUBEROSE WITH HEAT

Vendetta Donna is composed by master perfumer Dominique Ropion in collaboration with Andrew Everett. Valentino describes it as a floral gourmand woody fragrance built around the carnal expression of tuberose, using the flower not as something delicate and polite but as the sensual centre of the composition.

A red orange nectar accord brings brightness and a juicy, almost liquorous quality before the fragrance moves into Tuberose Osmobloom, the creamy floral heart. Sandalwood anchors the composition, giving the scent a warmer and more enveloping finish against the luminosity of the citrus and white flower.

The structure is deliberately immediate. Red orange gives the opening its vividness; tuberose supplies body and sensuality; sandalwood draws the fragrance closer to skin. It is a relatively concise architecture, but one designed to create contrast between brightness and depth.

VENDETTA UOMO: GINGER, SPICE AND WOOD

Vendetta Uomo, composed by master perfumer Marie Salamagne, takes the same emotional premise in a different olfactory direction. It is a woody spicy gourmand fragrance that opens with ginger extract from Peru, layered with fresh Italian citrus for a sharp and energetic first impression.

At the heart is a cinnamon liquor accord, warmer and more textured, before patchouli and modern woods provide the base. The movement from fresh ginger to liquor-like spice and then into darker woods gives Uomo its sense of controlled intensity — vibrant at the opening, increasingly tactile as it settles.

Together, Donna and Uomo are not designed as matching scents in the simplistic sense. Their connection lies in contrast. One moves through floral carnality, fruit and creamy woods; the other through brightness, spice and patchouli. The pair shares an attitude rather than a formula.

COUTURE CODES IN GLASS

The bottles continue that idea of two identities held within one visual system. Both are built around a sculptural V formed directly into the architectural glass, giving the bottles a graphic presence even before the colour of the fragrance is considered.

Vendetta Donna carries a deep red hue, while Uomo is presented in a warmer cognac tone. Their pleated caps reference the folds found in Valentino couture garments, translating a familiar Maison code into something tactile and recognisable without overwhelming the design.

The bottles therefore do what the strongest fragrance objects should: they make the relationship between fashion and scent visible. The V is unmistakably Valentino, while the pleating introduces a quieter couture reference that rewards a closer look.

PASSION AS A CONSCIOUS CHOICE

What makes Vendetta interesting is not simply that Valentino has returned to an archival name, or that two major actors front the campaign. The stronger idea is the way the entire launch — film, photography, fragrance and bottle — is organised around the same proposition: passion is not something that merely happens to people. It can be something they choose.

That thought gives the campaign its edge. Johnson and Skarsgård are shown as two people drawn together by instinct, but the relationship never feels accidental. The roads, interiors and flashes of Valentino red create the sense of a world being left behind in favour of one they are making for themselves.

Vendetta Donna and Vendetta Uomo translate that same tension into scent: distinct compositions, different materials and separate personalities, connected by a single emotional vocabulary.

Two fragrances. One story. And, in Valentino’s hands, passion becomes less a romantic accident than a deliberate act of defiance.

Imagery is used for editorial and illustrative purposes. All image rights remain with their respective owners, brands, photographers and agencies.