Valentino Casts Sombr in Pre-Fall Campaign as Major Houses Roll Out Storytelling Launches

Sombr just made his first true Valentino campaign move, and it is the kind that tells you where the season is headed before the clothes even hit a rack. Valentino cast the Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, and producer as the face of its Pre-Fall 2026 men’s campaign, then tied the rollout back to his debut in custom Maison Valentino at the 2026 Grammy Awards on February 1 in Los Angeles.

That is the headline, but the bigger signal is how Valentino is using him. The house is framing the men’s collection as “a new season” with “a contemporary edge,” and Sombr is doing the heavy lifting as a fresh global brand ambassador who feels tuned to the current fashion appetite: recognisable, music-adjacent, and polished enough to sell clothes without flattening the image. On the women’s side, Valentino is pushing a different but equally commercial mood, built around “sophisticated silhouettes, refined materials, and new expressions of style.” Put together, the two sides of Pre-Fall 2026 read less like a static lookbook and more like a full seasonal argument for grown-up glamour with enough edge to keep it circulating on social.

That approach is exactly why pre-fall has started behaving like a major fashion moment instead of a quiet bridge season. Marc Jacobs pushed the same idea in a very different register, casting Rachel Sennott in a scripted micro-drama called The Scene. The project is the first installment of Question Marc, an episodic, social-first series that blends fashion, film, and entertainment into one campaign strategy. It is smart casting and smarter packaging, because it turns a pre-fall launch into something that can live as clips, screenshots, and character lore, not just a set of images.

Taken together, these launches show how the major houses are building fall through personality, not just product. Sombr gives Valentino a younger, music-world edge with a clear red-carpet anchor point; Rachel Sennott gives Marc Jacobs a sharp, comic, internet-ready lead. The styling tells you the rest: refined fabrics, cleaner silhouettes, and campaigns built to travel beyond fashion press into the broader feed. Pre-fall is no longer just the in-between season. It is where the brands are auditioning the mood everybody will be copying by September.