Fashion · Celebrity
Michael Kors at 45, in Black and White
Some anniversaries call for a retrospective. Michael Kors has chosen a spotlight instead. For the house’s 45th year, the Fall/Winter 2026 campaign gathers six performers, Misty Copeland, Sutton Foster, Judith Light, Audra McDonald, Lea Michele and Kara Young, and asks each to do the one thing they do better than almost anyone: hold a room.
Photographed in New York by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, with movement direction by Stephen Galloway and styling by Carlos Nazario, the campaign lands in graphic black and white. No colour, no set dressing, nothing to hide behind.
The Cast
The Showstoppers
Women drawn from ballet, Broadway and television, cast for presence rather than image. Different disciplines, one shared talent for stopping you in your tracks the moment they enter the frame.
The Theme
New York Chic
The season’s idea is the chic entrance, the feeling, as Kors puts it, of walking into a room and knowing you own it. On the women it reads as dramatic simplicity: impeccable tailoring loosened by delicate draping, fluid layers that move, and outerwear cut to make an arrival.
It is a very New York kind of confidence, more attitude than ornament. The clothes stay quiet so the wearer does not have to.
The Look
Making an Entrance
Sculptural outerwear, an architectural bag held like punctuation, heels built for a city on the move. Everything here is dressed for the moment of arrival.
The Frame
A Study in Black and White
Inez and Vinoodh have made portraits for decades that feel more like encounters than sittings, and here the monochrome does real work. Without colour to lean on, the eye goes to line and light, to a jaw, a shoulder, the fall of a coat.
Stephen Galloway’s movement direction keeps the pictures alive, closer to choreography than a fashion shoot. These are performers, and the camera lets them perform.
The Mood
Line and Light
Stripped of colour, gesture and cut carry the frame. It is drama achieved without a single loud note, the kind of restraint that reads as power.
The Collection
Dressed for the City
Look closely and the clothes reward it. A crepe jersey gown is covered in hand-embroidered plumes; a wool flannel cascade blazer is cut to match a pleated trouser. Handbags borrow the architectural strength of the designer’s hometown, structured and sculptural.
It is a wardrobe of classic silhouettes given a modern twist, glamour meant to be worn rather than merely admired.
The Detail
Impeccable Tailoring
Sharp shoulders, clean lines, a silk shirt that means business. The quiet backbone of the season, cut to flatter and built to last.
The Evening
Glamour, Turned Up
For all its restraint, the season knows how to shine. Feathers and plumes, a flash of sequin, the swing of a boa: eveningwear that reads as celebration rather than costume.
It is the part of the wardrobe built for the entrance the theme keeps promising, and it wears its drama lightly.
The Shine
A Little Theatre
Plumes and sequins, worn with a smile. The collection’s lighter, louder heart, and proof that polish and joy can share the same frame.
The Cause
A Broadway Heart
There is sentiment here too. Kors traces his love of live performance to a Broadway show he saw at the age of five, and the 45th-anniversary collection was staged at the Opera House at New York’s Lincoln Center.
To mark the campaign, the house is donating in each star’s name to Broadway Cares, one of the country’s leading nonprofit funders of healthcare and community programmes. The global campaign debuts on social in September, with print to follow in select fall issues.
The Sign-Off
Own the Room
Sunglasses on, coat swinging, the last word left to attitude. Forty-five years in, the Michael Kors woman still walks in like she owns the place.
For Boujeez
For Boujeez, the appeal is in the restraint. In a loud season, a black-and-white campaign that trusts six women to carry it is its own kind of confidence, and confidence, worn well, is a language the Gulf reader knows fluently. Forty-five years in, Michael Kors is still selling the idea he always has: walk in, own the room, and let the clothes keep up.