You Be You

DVF hadn't partnered with a new agency in over twenty years. That fact alone tells you what the pitch needed to do: it couldn't just be good strategy. It had to make Diane von Furstenberg believe that the people in the room understood what her brand actually stood for — not just what it looked like.

The insight that unlocked the creative direction came from something more personal than a research deck. My mother was a DVF woman. She embodied what the brand had always stood for: confident, multifaceted, unapologetic about all of it. But this campaign was for me — my generation, women moving between versions of themselves in a single day, not choosing between them.

We landed on "You Be You." The strategic premise: modern women don't fit into one box. They're the CEO in the morning and the one who cries at movies at night. They're ambitious and tender. They're plural, not singular. DVF's wraps — the most democratic garment in luxury fashion, one size, one silhouette, endlessly adaptable — were the perfect visual expression of that idea. When I shared the personal connection in the room — that I was making this campaign for myself and for my mother — something shifted. It stopped being a pitch. Diane saw it. We won DVF's first new creative agency partnership in over twenty years.

DVF's brief arrived with Karlie Kloss already attached as the campaign face and a mandate around female empowerment. The strategic challenge wasn't the talent or the theme — it was making the campaign feel specific enough to DVF that it couldn't have come from any other brand. Twenty years without a new creative partner means the bar for trust is high. The insight had to come from somewhere more personal than a research deck.

My mother was a DVF woman. She embodied what the brand had always stood for: confident, multifaceted, unapologetic about all of it. But this campaign was for me — my generation, women moving between versions of themselves in a single day, not choosing between them.

We landed on You Be You. The strategic premise: modern women don't fit into one box. They're the CEO in the morning and the one who cries at movies at night. They're ambitious and tender. They're plural, not singular. DVF's wraps — the most democratic garment in luxury fashion, one size, one silhouette, endlessly adaptable — were the perfect visual expression of that idea.

When I shared the personal connection in the room — that I was making this campaign for myself and for my mother — something shifted. It stopped being a pitch. Diane saw it. We won DVF's first new creative agency partnership in over twenty years.