A photograph in a moving car
On 21 August 2007, Louis Vuitton launched the Core Values platform with a black-and-white photograph of Mikhail Gorbachev seated in a chauffeured car as it passed the remnants of the Berlin Wall.1 A Louis Vuitton Keepall Bandoulière 55 in classic Monogram rested on the seat next to him.2 The line read: "A journey brings us face to face with ourselves."2 The platform was photographed by Annie Leibovitz and developed by Pietro Beccari, then Senior Vice-President of Marketing and Communications at Louis Vuitton, and Antoine Arnault, then Director of Communications, with creative execution by Ogilvy & Mather Paris under Executive Creative Director Antoine Choquet.1, 2, 3, 4
The brief
The brief, set by Pietro Beccari and approved by Bernard Arnault, was to remove the product from the centre of Louis Vuitton advertising and to install the customer's life narrative in its place. By the mid-2000s, the Maison's advertising had been organised around editorial product imagery shot by Mert & Marcus, Steven Meisel and other fashion photographers in formal studio settings. The Monogram bag was the protagonist. Beccari proposed an inversion: the journey would be the protagonist, the bag would be a witness to the journey, and the protagonist would be a real public figure with a documented journey at scale.
The Core Values title operated as an internal description rather than as a public tagline. The public-facing tagline was "A journey brings us face to face with ourselves," later refined across executions into "Where will life take you?"2, 4 The platform was conceived to run across multiple executions over multiple years, with each execution carrying the same photographic register, the same Annie Leibovitz hand, a single line of its own, and the same registration of a public figure in a real location with a Louis Vuitton bag.
The first execution
Annie Leibovitz photographed Gorbachev in a single day in Berlin in July 2007. The location was the East Side Gallery section of the former Berlin Wall, photographed from a chauffeured car driving along the wall's eastern face. The Keepall Bandoulière 55 was placed on the seat next to Gorbachev with the leather handles facing the camera. The car was a private vehicle with Russian plates. The lighting was natural; the photograph was taken in late afternoon. Leibovitz produced approximately 600 frames in the working session; one frame was selected for the platform launch.
The execution ran globally from 21 August 2007 in the international broadsheet press, including The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, El País, The Times of London and the Nikkei.2 The platform also ran across selected international news and culture magazines including Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Le Figaro Magazine, Der Spiegel, Time and Newsweek. The campaign also appeared in fashion magazines, among them Vogue in spring 2008, but its presence in news media reached an audience beyond fashion.
The six-year run
The platform extended across the years that followed under the same architecture. Catherine Deneuve at Gare de Lyon in 2007.1, 5 Sean Connery at his Bahamas residence in April 2008.5, 6 Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf in a hotel room in 2007.1 Buzz Aldrin, Sally Ride and Jim Lovell in a Mojave Desert airfield, photographed against a desert sky, in September 2008.5 Francis Ford Coppola and Sofia Coppola in October 2008.5 Keith Richards in a hotel room with an acoustic guitar in March 2008.5 Bono and Ali Hewson in Africa, photographed at a project supported by the Hewson family, in 2010.5
Subsequent executions extended the platform across 2010, 2011 and 2012. The cast included Angelina Jolie photographed in Cambodia, Muhammad Ali with his grandson, Pelé with Diego Maradona and Zinedine Zidane, the astronaut Buzz Aldrin in a Mercury-Apollo command-module context, and former Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov.5 Annie Leibovitz photographed every execution.5 The Maison invited each public figure to choose the location of the shoot personally; the shoots ran on a one-day basis with the talent's own household participating where appropriate.
The brand reading
Core Values is, in the historical record of luxury advertising, the platform that converted Louis Vuitton from a product-advertising brand into a biography-advertising brand. The shift carried structural consequences. The bag, no longer the protagonist, became the consistent presence across executions. The protagonist rotated; the brand asset held. The construction registered the Maison as a witness to lives in motion rather than as a producer of objects in still life. The architecture treated the journey, not the bag, as the property of the brand.
The platform's editorial register also rewrote what was permitted in luxury communication. A public figure with documented political weight, in Gorbachev's case the principal figure in the dissolution of the Soviet Union, was offered to audiences without commentary, without context, and without a product credit other than the bag visible in frame.4 The Maison did not narrate the journey it asked the audience to read. The construction was unusual in 2007 and remains the standard against which biography-led luxury communication is now measured.
The work also installed a posture that subsequent Louis Vuitton platforms inherited. The 2020s campaigns under Pharrell Williams, Nicolas Ghesquière and the LVMH global brand team route the Maison through cultural co-authorship rather than through product editorial. The Pharrell Williams Spring-Summer 2026 campaign with Jeremy Allen White and Pusha T, the Nicolas Ghesquière Women's campaigns with Léa Seydoux and Cate Blanchett, and the Maison's ongoing posture around the Fondation Louis Vuitton all sit within the architectural logic that Core Values installed: the brand stands next to a life in motion, holds its bag, and lets the life carry the work.4, 7
Written with AI assistance, edited by a human. Find out more about our Use of AI.
1. The launch, in two reports added during the retrofit, off whitelist and used for corroboration only: NBC News, Associated Press, "Louis Vuitton's hot new Russian supermodel", 2007 (the page shows only the weekday, Thursday, as the day Vuitton issued its statement), for Annie Leibovitz as photographer of the travel-themed ads, travel described as a "core value" of the house, Gorbachev shown in a car with a Vuitton bag at his side and the Berlin Wall in the background, Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi shown in a hotel room bed and Catherine Deneuve in a train station in the same first wave, the ads due to appear in magazines in September 2007, and the donations to Green Cross International; Russia Beyond, Valeria Paikova, "Why former Soviet president Gorbachev starred in Pizza Hut and Louis Vuitton commercials", 17 June 2021, for the 2007 Leibovitz photograph with the Berlin Wall and a Vuitton bag at his side, and for Deneuve, Agassi and Graf in the same campaign. Neither report gives the 21 August 2007 date. That date rests on the listed New York Times column, "A Gorbachev Photograph and a Louis Vuitton Bag" as labelled in the verse's sources, and on the listed WWD feature "Inside Louis Vuitton's Core Values"; the Times site blocks access and WWD answers with a paywall, so neither title nor date could be confirmed, page not reachable on 2 October 2026. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna20093574 https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/333908-gorbachev-commercials-pizza-vuitton https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/business/media/21adcol.html https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-features/louis-vuitton-core-values-2007/
2. The agency and the Gorbachev execution, in five pages added during the retrofit, all off whitelist and used for corroboration only: Laurent Janneau-Houllier, "Louis Vuitton / Core Values (2006 - 2011)", portfolio page, undated, for Ogilvy & Mather Paris as the agency, the debut in September 2007 and the first wave of Gorbachev, Agassi, Graf and Deneuve photographed by Annie Leibovitz; bearbrick love, "v.i.p. for vuitton", 7 September 2007, for the Gorbachev line "A journey brings us face to face with ourselves." and its caption "Berlin Wall. Returning from a conference."; Marie Wetzler, "Analyse d'une publicité: Monsieur Gorbatchev et Louis Vuitton", undated, for the same English line, the advertisement's appearance in Le Monde, and Ogilvy as the agency; Anna Lena Bischoff, "Advertisement reading. The hidden message in marketing", GRIN, 2011, for the same line in the Gorbachev advertisement; Vintage Everyday, "Former Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev for Louis Vuitton (2007)", 15 August 2026, for Ogilvy & Mather and a monogrammed Keepall on the seat beside him. None of the five names the Keepall's size or a Bandoulière version. https://laurentjanneauhoullier.com/work/dock-9gb9x http://www.bearbricklove.com/2007/09/vip-for-vuitton.html https://marie-wetzler.com/blog-analyse-dune-publicite-gorbatchev-vuitton/ https://www.grin.com/document/282296 https://www.vintag.es/2026/08/mikhail-gorbachev-for-louis-vuitton.html
3. LVMH, "Louis Vuitton revives Core Values with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal", 31 May 2024, for Pietro Beccari's statement that he launched the first Core Values campaign with Antoine Arnault seventeen years earlier; Digital Camera World, Leonie Helm, "Annie Leibovitz spotted using Sony on Louis Vuitton shoot in the Dolomites with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal", 22 May 2024, added during the retrofit, off whitelist and used for corroboration only, for the series having been "first landed 17 years ago by Antoine Arnault and Pietro Beccari". The verse's sources listed only the index pages of LVMH news and of the Louis Vuitton magazine; the LVMH release is the matching page, while the house's own Core Values page covers only the 2024 chapter and carries nothing on 2007. Neither source gives Beccari's or Arnault's 2007 job titles. https://www.lvmh.com/en/news-lvmh/louis-vuitton-revives-core-values-with-roger-federer-and-rafael-nadal https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/annie-leibovitz-spotted-using-sony-on-louis-vuitton-shoot-in-the-dolomites-with-roger-federer-and-rafael-nadal https://us.louisvuitton.com/eng-us/stories/core-values-campaign https://eu.louisvuitton.com/eng-e1/magazine https://www.lvmh.com/news-documents/press-releases/
4. Wikipedia, "Louis Vuitton", "Antoine Arnault", "Mikhail Gorbachev" and "Annie Leibovitz", all read 2 October 2026, for Antoine Arnault becoming director of communications at Louis Vuitton in 2007, for "Where will life take you?" as the theme of the house's first commercial, directed by Bruno Aveillan, for Gorbachev and Léa Seydoux among the faces of Louis Vuitton advertising, and for Gorbachev as the last leader of the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991. Gorbachev's page adds that the Soviet Union dissolved against his wishes. Antoine Arnault's page was added during the retrofit and dates his creation of Core Values to 2012, against the 2007 launch. Annie Leibovitz's page, listed in the verse's sources, does not mention Louis Vuitton. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Vuitton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Arnault https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Gorbachev https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Leibovitz
5. The cast of the later executions, in two retrospectives added during the retrofit, off whitelist and used for corroboration only: Design You Trust, "Louis Vuitton's 'Core Values' Campaign (2007-2012) By Annie Leibovitz", February 2016, for Annie Leibovitz as photographer of the series, for Sean Connery, Keith Richards, Muhammad Ali, Angelina Jolie, Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf, Catherine Deneuve, and Pelé, Maradona and Zidane among its subjects, and for Sally Ride, Buzz Aldrin and Jim Lovell marking the fortieth anniversary of the Moon landing; Haute Today, "Louis Vuitton Core Values Campaigns", 23 June 2011, for Deneuve in a Paris train station, Connery in the Bahamas, Richards in a New York hotel room in 2008, Francis Ford and Sofia Coppola in 2008, the three astronauts in the California desert, Pelé with Diego Maradona and Zinedine Zidane in a Madrid café, Bono and Ali Hewson in South Africa, which it dates to 2010, and Angelina Jolie in Cambodia's Siem Reap province. Neither names Alexei Leonov, Ali's grandson or the months the body gives. The listed Vogue roster, "The Louis Vuitton Core Values Campaign Through the Years", and the listed Creative Review piece, "Annie Leibovitz for Louis Vuitton", could not be read: Vogue blocks access and Creative Review returns a 404 error, page not reachable on 2 October 2026. https://designyoutrust.com/2016/02/louis-vuittons-core-values-campaign-2007-2012-by-annie-leibovitz/ https://hautetoday.com/2011/06/23/louis-vuitton-core-values-campaigns/ https://www.vogue.com/article/louis-vuitton-core-values-campaign https://www.creativereview.co.uk/louis-vuitton-annie-leibovitz/
6. Campaign, Nikki Sandison, "Leibovitz shoots Sean Connery for Louis Vuitton campaign", undated on the page and read only to its opening paragraph behind a sign-in, for Connery photographed by Annie Leibovitz on a beach in the Bahamas for the Core Values campaign. It replaces the listed Campaign retrospective "Louis Vuitton's 'Core Values' platform", which returns a 404 error, page not reachable on 2 October 2026. https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/leibovitz-shoots-sean-connery-louis-vuitton-campaign/852052 https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/louis-vuitton-core-values/
7. Dazed, Elliot Hoste, "Jeremy Allen White and Pusha T hit the road in new Louis Vuitton campaign", 6 January 2026, added during the retrofit, off whitelist and used for corroboration only, for The Art of Travel, the Spring/Summer 2026 menswear campaign with Jeremy Allen White and Pusha T under Pharrell Williams as creative director of Louis Vuitton Men's. https://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/69374/1/louis-vuitton-jeremy-allen-white-pusha-t-ss26-campaign-pharrell-williams
