Core values returns to the summit with Federer and Nadal

Two rivals, one ascent

On 18 May 2024 Louis Vuitton releases a new chapter of its Core Values campaign, the long-running advertising platform that pictures cultural and historical icons accompanied by their Louis Vuitton luggage.^{1, 2} The image is captured by Annie Leibovitz on the Italian Dolomites and shows Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal at roughly three thousand metres of altitude, seated on a ridge with a Monogram Christopher backpack and its Monogram Eclipse counterpart.^{3, 1} The accompanying tagline reads "There are Journeys that turn into Legends."³ It marks the first new chapter of the series in twelve years and the first joint Louis Vuitton appearance of the two players, who between them accumulated forty-two Grand Slam titles across two decades of rivalry.^{3, 4, 5}

The visual proposition is straightforward. Two of the most decorated athletes in the history of their sport are removed from the courts on which they made their names and placed in a landscape that has nothing to do with competition. The body language is that of companions on a shared ascent rather than opponents.³ The brand's products appear without conspicuous staging; the Christopher backpack, named after Christopher Louis Vuitton and originally drawn in the 1970s, accompanies the climb as a piece of equipment rather than as a fashion accessory. This is the editorial register the Core Values series has maintained since 2007.⁴

The platform behind the image

The series was conceived under Antoine Arnault, then Louis Vuitton's Head of Communications, and launched in September 2007 with images of Mikhail Gorbachev, Catherine Deneuve and the tennis pair Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf.^{3, 6} The brief from that first chapter has held throughout the platform's run: portrait the legend, place the bag, decline to over-explain. Subsequent chapters featured Sean Connery in the Bahamas, Buzz Aldrin and Sally Ride at Edwards Air Force Base in California, Bono and Ali Hewson in Ethiopia, Angelina Jolie in Cambodia, and Muhammad Ali with his grandson in 2012, after which the series went quiet for twelve years.^{4, 6}

For the May 2024 chapter the campaign returns to the original brief but updates the legends. Federer joined Louis Vuitton's roster of ambassadors in 2010, when Leibovitz photographed him with Sean Connery in a vintage car on Venice Beach for an earlier Core Values insertion. Nadal is new to the platform. The reunion is editorially loaded. Federer retired from professional tennis in September 2022; Nadal announces his retirement in October 2024, five months after the campaign's release. The Dolomites image therefore arrives during a transitional period for both careers and stages the friendship between the two players, which had become a recurring topic of sporting press since their joint farewell at the 2022 Laver Cup in London.

Continuity through the photographer

The choice of Annie Leibovitz as photographer matters to the platform's continuity. Leibovitz has shot every chapter of Core Values since 2007 and is identified with the series' visual signature: a single, slightly elevated horizon line, a low-saturation palette, narrative posture rather than fashion posture.⁶ The Dolomites shoot, conducted on Sony digital cameras according to coverage in Digital Camera World, follows that template.⁷ There is no second protagonist beyond the two athletes; the landscape is the only co-star. A short film by director Frédéric Planchon accompanies the print release, produced by Académie Films, with an original score by composer Saunder Jurriaans.

Federer is photographed with the Monogram Christopher backpack in classic coated canvas; Nadal carries the same silhouette in the Monogram Eclipse colourway, the all-black version Louis Vuitton introduced in 2016 under Kim Jones for the menswear line.³ The product placement is deliberately understated. The backpacks are seen as travel companions rather than as the subject of the image, which keeps the platform anchored to the brand's founding trade of luggage rather than to its seasonal accessories programme.

The Core Values slot in the brand architecture

Within the broader Louis Vuitton advertising architecture the Core Values series occupies a specific slot. It is not a fashion campaign and it is not tied to a seasonal collection. The product depicted is always travel luggage, never ready-to-wear or fine jewellery, which keeps the platform anchored to the brand's founding trade. It runs in parallel to the seasonal campaigns shot for Nicolas Ghesquière's women's collections and Pharrell Williams's menswear and is one of the few advertising assets that survives the rotation of creative directors. In that sense the series functions as a heritage anchor: it reminds the wider Louis Vuitton communication apparatus that the Maison's first product was a flat-topped trunk.

The campaign rolls out on Louis Vuitton's social channels on 18 May 2024 and in print insertions across selected international titles in the weeks that follow.^{1, 2} The reception of the chapter focuses largely on the choice of cast. Several titles read the image as a quiet coda to a sporting era; others note the rarity of seeing the two players in a single editorial frame. The fashion press tracks the Christopher backpack mentions and the Monogram Eclipse line. Within the platform's twelve-year hiatus it is the first new chapter under Pietro Beccari, who became Louis Vuitton CEO in February 2023, and signals continuity rather than reinvention of the brand's heritage advertising.³