A city empties itself for one woman, and the fantasy is almost unnerving in its intimacy. In Donna Karan New York‘s Fall 2026 campaign, released September 2nd, Kendall Jenner moves through a New York stripped of crowds and traffic, sliding between the back seat of a car and the bare sidewalk as though the entire island has been cleared for her alone. Photographed by Mert Alas and set to the slow ache of INXS’s “Never Tear Us Apart,” the campaign marks the first time since the label’s 2024 relaunch that the cameras have left the studio and returned to the streets that gave the brand its name.
The premise is not new so much as inherited. The concept lifts directly from a late-1980s Donna Karan film shot by Dennis Piel, in which model Rosemary McGrotha narrated her private thoughts from inside a limousine gliding into the city. That earlier reverie, remarkably ahead of its time, becomes the scaffolding for Jenner’s version, where the interior monologue is traded for something more possessive: the sense that New York, in all its texture and light, belongs to her. It is a lineage the house understands well. McGrotha was also the face of Karan’s celebrated 1995 “In Women We Trust” campaign, and that same phrase anchored the brand’s Annie Leibovitz-shot relaunch two years ago, a supermodel-filled ode to heritage that reintroduced the label under G-III Apparel Group.
What makes the casting cohere is that Jenner reads as a plausible heir rather than a borrowed name. “Donna Karan has always embodied confidence and effortless sophistication, qualities I really connect with,” she says of the collaboration. “Being a part of the Fall 2026 campaign felt like celebrating the energy of New York and a woman who knows her style and embraces who she is.” The clothes carry that argument forward. Jenner steps into the brand’s archival bodysuit, reworked for the season with an extra-wide belt, then layers a draped wool jersey jacket and skirt beneath a leather coat before settling into a richly tailored velvet suit. These are not costume references. They are the vocabulary Karan built in 1984 with her Seven Easy Pieces, that streamlined system of dressing designed to make a working woman’s morning effortless, translated into a colder, glossier register.
Color does much of the persuading. Several of the looks arrive in a shade the house is calling black cherry, more luscious than oxblood and more intriguing than a plain black, and it recurs with intention: on the velvet suit, again on the Black Cherry Leno bag, threading the palette into a single deep temperature rather than a spread of autumnal tones. Jenner also appears in a stylized aviator jacket and skirt in espresso brown, and in a full-length sequin dress that catches the light with a sultry, deliberate shimmer. The accessories finish the case, sculptural gold jewelry that reads more as hardware than ornament, the Cashmere Tote in chocolate suede, and eyewear that keeps the whole thing squarely urban.
Behind the images sits a familiar creative architecture. Trey Laird, who steered the relaunch, directs again, with styling by Jessica Diehl, hair by Chris McMillan and makeup by Mary Phillips. Laird has described Alas as a photographer capable of building a cinematic world around powerful fashion imagery, and the choice to shoot Jenner across real locations rather than a controlled set is the campaign’s quiet thesis, a wager that authenticity photographs better than perfection. The rollout matches that ambition. The narrative is being amplified through what the brand calls a 360-degree media approach, spanning high-visibility digital platforms, print placements and premium outdoor displays, a scale of spending the label has not committed since its return. The Fall 2026 collection is available now on DonnaKaran.com and at select retailers worldwide. If black cherry was not already on your autumn moodboard, it is difficult to imagine it staying off.
