Karl Lagerfeld has extended its alliance with Paris Hilton for another year and will put her at the center of its fall 2026 campaign alongside Not-Karl, a digital character built to echo the brand’s founder without pretending to be him. The campaign breaks Tuesday across digital, print, social media and outdoor, and it will be followed by a spring 2027 campaign with Hilton still in the frame.
That timing matters because Hilton is not just returning; she is returning after being the surprise star of the brand’s last two campaigns, and the company is treating that run as proof that the pairing works. Pier Paolo Righi said Hilton’s first two campaigns, for fall 2025 and spring 2026, bolstered the business in a very tangible way across every region of the world and helped it keep growing in an environment that has become increasingly challenging.
The new work leans into that momentum. Shot by Matt Easton, the fall 2026 campaign shows Hilton beside stacks of retro TV sets broadcasting Not-Karl, with a short black-and-white video of the two sparring as she tells him, “You just look a little different.” He answers, “I like to reinvent myself.” The setup is meant to read as playful rather than literal, and the company says the point is to bring back some of Karl’s spirit in a new way.
That is where the story gets uneasy. The brand says it is not trying to recreate Karl, yet Not-Karl is described as a synthetic digital character whose voice is generated specifically for the role and designed to capture his accent, intonations and blunt way of speaking. Righi said the name itself adds the irony and playfulness that were part of Karl Lagerfeld’s personality, but the line between tribute and imitation is not hard to see.
Hilton also gives the campaign a built-in personal history. Righi said she was not an obvious choice, and that was the point, calling the partnership unexpected, provocative and culturally relevant. He said she loves being part of Karl’s future legacy and was wearing the brand’s collections long before the collaboration began, a detail that helps explain why the house is willing to keep extending the arrangement. For now, the answer to the question the campaign raises is simple: Karl Lagerfeld is betting that Hilton and Not-Karl can carry the brand from Tuesday into spring 2027 without losing the tension that made the pairing work in the first place.
