Jonathan Bailey’s New Armani Campaign Is a Love Letter to Hollywood
The actor stars in a short film by Todd Field for I Will, the new Giorgio Armani fragrance built around bergamot, lavender, leather and vanilla.
ARMANI BEAUTY
Jonathan Bailey arrives in Los Angeles in black and white. He sits alone in an apartment, wanders through unfamiliar rooms and waits for whatever comes next. Then the music lifts, color floods the frame and he begins to dance. By the time he drives towards the Hollywood sign, the city has become a place of possibility.
This is the setting for I Will, Giorgio Armani Beauty’s new masculine fragrance and Bailey’s latest role. The campaign film was directed by Todd Field, the filmmaker behind Tár and In the Bedroom, and shot at Universal Studios. For Bailey, it was also a first: despite years spent working across television, theatre and cinema, he had never filmed in America before.
That sense of arrival gives the film its pulse. Bailey plays an actor searching for meaning before his next part, caught in the strange interval between one chapter and another. Hollywood appears through familiar emblems—a car, a backlot, a hillside sign—but the performance remains private and playful. He dances when no one is watching.
Bailey has spoken often about the physical details that help him enter a character. In theatre, he chooses a particular scent for each role. Fragrance becomes part of the costume, though no one in the audience can see it. The association can remain for years, bringing back the rehearsal room, a fellow actor or the feeling of stepping onstage before the lights come up.
His fascination began at home. The youngest of four children, he remembers running upstairs to sample the bottles belonging to his siblings. Smell still carries that immediate connection to people and memory. A trace left on a coat or caught in the street can return someone to us before we have had time to name them.
I Will was created by perfumers Nathalie Lorson and Alberto Morillas. Bergamot brings brightness at the opening, followed by aromatic lavender, soft vanilla and leather. The refillable bottle graduates from matte black to transparent glass, echoing the campaign as it moves from shadow into Californian color.
ARMANI BEAUTY
The name reads like a promise. It also suits Bailey at this particular moment. After a huge year on screen in 2025, he devoted much of 2026 to The Shameless Fund, the nonprofit he founded to support LGBTQ+ organisations. His next projects include films that take him away from the romantic and blockbuster roles with which audiences may know him best, along with a planned return to the West End.
Discover the latest in Fashion, Beauty, Wellness and Lifestyle at SABLE WEST
There is an appealing intimacy to seeing a male fragrance campaign built around anticipation rather than conquest. Bailey’s character is charismatic, certainly, but the film allows him uncertainty, silliness and solitude. The seduction comes from watching him find his footing.
Armani has a long history with cinema, dressing actors both on screen and beyond it. Here, the clothes, the city and the fragrance are woven into the same story: a man arrives with no finished answer, puts on a jacket, chooses a scent and walks towards the soundstage. Sometimes becoming someone new begins with a very small ritual.