Donna Karan Fall 2024 Ad Campaign

Review of Donna Karan Fall 2024 Ad Campaign by Creative Director Trey Laird and Photographer Mikael Jansson with models Christy Turlington, Eva Herzigova, Amber Valletta, Alek Wek, Karen Elson, Imaan Hammam, Liu Wen, and Edie Campbell

Donna Karan continues to revive the classics with its Fall 2024 campaign, the second since the brand’s major relaunch. The campaign features creative direction from Trey Laird and photography by Mikael Jansson.

The campaign picks up where the brand’s initial relaunch campaign left off, bringing together a cast of iconic models who both repped DK in its heyday and represent a new generation. Amber Valletta and Imaan Hammam return from that first chapter, and now are joined by the likes of Christy Turlington, Eva Herzigova, Karen Elson, and more.

While it shares the first chapter’s strong approach to casting and its spirit of letting powerful, graceful women shine, this new campaign also suffers from the same problems. In addition to a lack of visual originality and narrative emotion, the set design and photographic perspective feel a bit dated, which isn’t helped by the way that the brand’s design language hasn’t really evolved.

In trying to recapture the golden age of Donna Karan, we worry that the brand’s new direction might be forgetting that a lot of time has passed since then, that we are in a completely new creative context. It’s very possible that fans of the classic DK era will connect with this throwback, but it’s unclear how successful the campaign will be at drawing in new customers or reconnecting with customers whose taste and values have evolved.

All that being said, this is only the brand’s second campaign since its relaunch, and it may make strategic sense to spend a year laying a familiar foundation from which to evolve and build. When the pace of the fashion industry has changed so much since the brand’s late-80s heyday, however, nailing the timing of this slow look backward may prove challenging – but it may also be another success story.