Article Summary: Kendall Jenner fronts Donna Karan's Fall 2026 campaign, photographed by Mert Alas across New York City. It is the first campaign shot on location since the label's relaunch, and it rebuilds a late-1980s Dennis Piel film with a new ending. Here is every look, the archive reference, and what it signals.
The concept is simple and slightly eerie: Kendall Jenner has New York entirely to herself. No crowds, no traffic, just a woman and a city that usually refuses to be empty. It is the first time since Donna Karan’s relaunch that a campaign has left the studio.
Kendall Jenner fronts the Donna Karan campaign for Fall 2026, photographed by Mert Alas across New York City locations. The campaign revives the label’s archival bodysuit and draws its concept from a late-1980s Dennis Piel film starring Rosemary McGrotha. It launched September 2, 2026.
What Is Kendall Jenner Wearing in the Donna Karan New York Campaign?
The clothes run darker and heavier than the brand’s recent seasons. Jenner wears the house bodysuit pulled from the archives and updated with an extra-wide belt, then a draped wool jersey jacket and skirt layered under a leather coat.
Tailoring carries the middle of the campaign. There is a velvet suit, an aviator jacket and skirt in deep espresso brown, and a full-length sequin dress built for shimmer rather than sparkle.
Key Takeaways:
- Mert Alas photographed the Fall 2026 campaign on location across New York City, a first since Donna Karan’s 2024 relaunch.
- The campaign references a late-1980s Dennis Piel film starring Rosemary McGrotha, scored to INXS’s “Never Tear Us Apart.”
- Accessories include the Cashmere Tote in chocolate suede and the Black Cherry Leno bag, with sculptural gold jewellery throughout.
Black Cherry Is the Season’s Argument
One shade does most of the work. The brand describes Donna Karan black cherry as more luscious than oxblood and more intriguing than classic black. That is a precise way of naming a colour that has been creeping across autumn collections for two seasons.
It appears on the velvet suit and again on the Leno bag. Paired with chocolate suede and espresso brown, it gives the whole Donna Karan Fall 2026 palette a single temperature rather than a range.
Accessories finish it. The sculptural gold jewellery reads as hardware rather than ornament, which is exactly how this house has always used metal.
Who Photographed the Kendall Jenner Donna Karan Campaign?
Mert Alas shot it. The Mert Alas Kendall Jenner pairing is the campaign’s other headline. Alas built his reputation on precisely the register this brand needs: glossy, high-contrast, unapologetically sensual.
He photographed her across the city rather than in a controlled set. That decision matters more than it sounds. WWD reported that the campaign rolls out with print placements and premium outdoor displays alongside social. That is a scale of spend the label has not deployed since returning.
The Team Behind It
Trey Laird handled creative direction, as he has across the relaunch. Jessica Diehl styled, continuing from the Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 campaigns.
Chris McMillan did hair and Mary Phillips did makeup. That is a Los Angeles-heavy crew shooting a New York story. The friction shows in a good way, since the images run sleeker than anything the house produced in its 1990s heyday.
Why Donna Karan Is Revisiting Its 1980s Archives
Because the archives are the asset, and it is a strategy Runway Magazine has watched play out across luxury all year. A brand relaunching after years of dormancy has two options. It can invent a new identity, or it can prove the old one still works. Donna Karan has chosen the second, repeatedly.
The Fall 2025 campaign marked 40 years of the label with Claudia Schiffer, Irina Shayk, Imaan Hammam, Liya Kebede and Mariacarla Boscono. Spring 2026 followed with Adriana Lima, Joan Smalls and Grace Elizabeth. Both leaned on heritage and on multiple faces at once.
This one breaks that pattern. Kendall Jenner carries it alone. That is a bet that a single contemporary name can hold what five legacy models held last year.
The Rosemary McGrotha Reference
The source material is specific. In the late 1980s, Dennis Piel shot a campaign and film for the house. In it, McGrotha voiced her inner thoughts from inside a limousine moving into New York.
Fall 2026 inverts it. Instead of arriving in the city, Jenner already owns it, moving through streets emptied for her. The soundtrack is INXS’s “Never Tear Us Apart,” which places the whole thing firmly in the same era it is quoting.
That is a sharper piece of archive work than most heritage revivals manage. Rather than reprint an old image, the brand rebuilt the feeling and changed the ending.
What the Kendall Jenner Bodysuit Signals
The bodysuit is the brand’s founding argument in one garment. Donna Karan built her business in 1985 on the Seven Easy Pieces. The bodysuit was the base layer that made the system work, the thing everything else sat on top of.
Bringing it back with a wider belt is not nostalgia. It is a statement about what the label thinks is still structurally sound.
The timing helps. Bodysuits have returned across contemporary collections. Jenner, meanwhile, has spent two years building a public identity around archival and vintage dressing. The Kendall Jenner Donna Karan match works because both parties are already in the archive business.
Where This Sits in the Relaunch
Donna Karan New York, owned by G-III Apparel Group, has been rebuilding since 2024. Each campaign since has tested a different formula. This is the first to commit fully to one face and one city.
The Kendall Jenner New York fashion association does real work here. She is a New York-coded model despite being Californian, and the campaign leans on that reading rather than explaining it.
Whether it converts is the open question. The Donna Karan 2026 collection is available now on the brand’s site and at select retailers globally, so the answer arrives quickly.
Every Face Since the Relaunch
The casting history tells the story better than the clothes do. Fall 2024 brought back Christy Turlington alongside Eva Herzigova, Amber Valletta, Alek Wek, Karen Elson, Liu Wen and Edie Campbell. Kate Moss then took Spring 2025 alone.
After that came five icons for Fall 2025 and three women for Spring 2026. Now it is one again.
Jenner is therefore not the first solo face of the relaunch. She is the first contemporary one. Every previous single booking leaned on a model whose authority came from the nineties, and this is the first whole season handed to someone born after the label was founded.
That is the real risk inside the Kendall Jenner Donna Karan campaign. Legacy casting is safe because it borrows credibility. Contemporary casting has to build it.
What Comes Next
Spring 2027 will show whether Jenner stays. The Kendall Jenner Donna Karan campaign only works as a reset if it repeats. A one-season booking makes this a moment. A multi-season run makes it a strategy, and the difference matters for a brand still establishing what it is.
One number is worth watching more than the images. G-III reported a 10 percent drop in second-quarter sales amid a portfolio shift, which is the commercial backdrop this campaign is arriving against. A spend of this scale is a decision made in that context, not despite it.
Watch the outdoor placements more than the social posts. Premium outdoor is expensive, hard to measure and deeply New York. Choosing it says the brand is buying presence rather than engagement.
For the campaign analysis, designer collections coverage and archive reporting that follows what a brand does next, trust Runway Magazine.
