After two successful campaign seasons, Paris Hilton extends her partnership with the house of Karl Lagerfeld. This time she is joined by NOT-KARL, a new digital character set to become a recurring protagonist in the brand’s universe.
Renewing a muse is a common gesture in the fashion industry. Pairing her with an entirely digital character, designed to interact with her on screen, is distinctly less so. Yet this is the choice made by the house of Karl Lagerfeld for its Fall-Winter 2026 campaign, which extends the collaboration begun with Paris Hilton since the Fall-Winter 2025 and Spring-Summer 2026 collections, while introducing NOT-KARL, a new member of the brand universe.
Photographed for the first time by Matt Easton, the campaign stages Paris Hilton and NOT-KARL in a set of retro multi-screen televisions, a device that immediately sets up a play of contrasts between the very real aura of the American entrepreneur and media personality and the acknowledged irony of a digital character. Pier Paolo Righi, chief executive of Karl Lagerfeld, presents this association as a way of renewing the brand’s narrative while remaining faithful to the outlook of Karl Lagerfeld himself, between wit and irreverence.
Paris Hilton, for her part, stresses the unexpected nature of the exercise, evoking a new alchemy on the set. This season she is accompanied by Kit Butler, face of the menswear wardrobe, whose friendly complicity with the muse feeds a duo dynamic that the brand has evidently wanted to stage in a more horizontal way than traditional fashion campaigns, built around a single face.
On the product side, the Fall-Winter 2026 collection embraces a graphic wardrobe and an essentially monochrome palette, between incisive tailoring and crafted outerwear, with a long white shirt inspired by the tuxedo as its centrepiece, and the K/Autograph bag range. The campaign will be deployed worldwide from 1 September 2026 across all digital, social, print and outdoor media, bringing together for the first time under one narrative the Karl Lagerfeld, Karl Lagerfeld Jeans and Karl Lagerfeld Paris lines. A dedicated event is also to be held during Paris Fashion Week, the details of which remain to be specified at this early September stage. It remains to be seen whether NOT-KARL, presented as the first chapter of a larger story, will become a recurring protagonist of the house or a mere seasonal wink.
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