Trey Laird Shares The Stories Behind Donna Karan New York’s Relaunch & Supermodel Campaigns!

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When Donna Karan New York was ready to relaunch, there was no question who could do justice to the DNA of the brand and bring the beloved label to a new generation. Enter legendary fashion ad exec Trey Laird, who was part of putting it on the map in its prime. For their second act, he enlisted the most talented and revered models and photographers for instantly iconic Spring and Fall campaigns. Laird tells us how it all came together.

What was the concept for this campaign?
When they called me I didn’t even realize it, but the Donna Karan brand had been out of circulation for almost a decade, and when they [G-III Apparel Group] bought the company from LVMH they had just focused on the DKNY secondary brand for the first few years. I thought, “I have to tell the story about the brand, what it meant, what it stood for, and what its DNA was to a new generation but also multiple generations of women.” Some people remembered it and some people didn’t, and so I thought about storytelling and how I could authentically do that. Because Donna is no longer involved in the brand, and there wasn’t a new designer, it was done through a team. How was I going to tell the story? I thought there was something interesting about telling it with female [models] who shared it and were part of it. It’s not about one woman, it’s about many women because that brand affected so many women for so many decades and so many women had such an emotional connection to it. That’s where it started; this idea of a group of multigenerational women that mostly all interacted with the brand or with Donna and did campaigns or shows or both over the course of the life of the brand.

Liu Wen, Imaan Hammam, Eva Herzigová, and Amber Valletta (Courtesy of Donna Karan New York)

The campaign is called “In Women We Trust.”
That was the title of Donna’s most famous campaign depicting a woman running for president. Now, 30 years later, how fitting that we finally have a woman running for president—and hopefully is going to win. The timing couldn’t be better. Donna was just always associated with the power of women. She was the most successful female American designer of all time—and a woman creating a brand inspired by and for other women.

You had so many iconic models for this! Did you have a dream wish list for the talent?
First I called [casting director] Piergiorgio Del Moro and I said, “You have to help me put this together. Here’s what I want to do, and it’s a tall order.” I thought about the different generations. Donna launched the brand in 1986 and obviously had its heydays through the ’90s and early 2000s, so I looked at different times and different women who represented such important moments and what was going on in fashion, and also that Donna connected with over time. So you go back to the first years when Linda [Evangelista] and Cindy [Crawford] were in all the shows and obviously making a huge impact in fashion overall. Linda did several well-known campaigns with [photographers] Peter Lindbergh and Steven Meisel for Donna, so I reached out to her and explained the concept. I reached out personally to each woman. Amber [Valletta] and Shalom [Harlow] met literally their first season on a DKNY shoot, and that was the first campaign they did together and I’ve known them ever since. Shalom had kind of semiretired, Amber has never stopped, and I loved the idea of bringing them back together. And then toward the end, right before Donna retired, Karlie [Kloss] was big news and one of Donna’s favorites. Christy [Turlington] was obviously such a huge part of that group as well, and she was in all of Donna’s early shows and Donna later on did a fragrance that Christy fronted, so I wanted her to be part of it.

The supermodel squad in the Spring campaign (Courtesy of Donna Karan New York)

This is so rare to get everyone you want.
It was such a pinch-me moment. Amber looked at me on set and said, “I can’t believe this is happening. This is so cool!” Then she started crying, then I started crying, then Shalom started crying, then Liya [Kebede] started crying, and then everyone was crying. And Annie [Leibovitz] was like, “Why are you all crying?” We’ve all kind of grown up together in our careers. I met Amber when she was a teenager who had just come from Tulsa. I was a young art director, and we’ve worked together for 25 years. It was a beautiful experience for all of them to come together, and I think they all certainly respect one another. There’s this shared interest in bringing back this brand and its legacy. It has had so much impact in American fashion and was taken for granted. Donna Karan definitely has a design DNA and a legacy that holds up.

Trey Laird (Courtesy of Trey Laird)

Tell us about your history with Donna Karan.
My first job out of college was at a new ad agency led by legendary ad exec Peter Arnell. I ended up working on Donna Karan for almost six years, and that’s when DKNY was launched. My first relationship with it was as an agency, then I left and worked at a couple of other companies. And a few years later, Donna called and told me that she wanted to start an in-house creative team and asked if I would come in and talk to her about it. I ended up joining Donna Karan in-house in 1992. And then eventually I did all the advertising in-house directly with her and for her. I had this incredible run there; I was there for 11 years. And over that time the company went public, culminating in LVMH buying it and it was a rocket ship. It was the fastest-growing brand in American fashion over that decade. DKNY exploded, and Donna Karan was an institution; it became like Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren for so many decades. I left to start my own agency, and Donna said that she wanted to be my first client and that she wanted me to continue doing all the ads.

Alek Wek and Edie Campbell (Courtesy of Donna Karan New York)

This is truly a full circle moment if there ever was one!
Totally full circle!

Why did you want Annie Leibowitz to shoot the Spring campaign?
After all the women were in, I said this isn’t just a seasonal fashion campaign. This is an epic moment in American fashion. I never think of Annie as the “fashion photographer,” although obviously she shoots for Vogue and she’s done all these campaigns, but I think she transcends fashion and she captures more of a cultural moment of the zeitgeist, and she’s always done that. Annie somehow makes everything she touches iconic and epic, and it just transcends fashion to me. I also thought this should be shot by the most important female photographer in the world.

And Mikael Jansson shot the Fall campaign.
Obviously Peter is no longer with us, and he did so many of the iconic campaigns, but Mikael has also done so many. I thought it could be interesting each season to collaborate with a new person that was also part of the Donna Karan legacy. Everyone said it was almost like The White Lotus; some guests returned and some didn’t.

Donna isn’t involved in the brand anymore, but has she seen this? What does she think?
I went down and saw her myself right after we shot this. I called her about it before I was doing it. I have a beautiful image…I did a FaceTime with her when we were on set with Annie and the girls—Amber, Linda, Shalom—they all FaceTimed Donna and said hello. It was sweet. I know it’s probably been emotional for her also to see it all. Her design vision lives on, and now all different types of women are wearing her brand again, and that’s a beautiful thing.

What else are you working on these days?
I’m doing a lot! I’m doing all this Donna Karan/DKNY relaunch work, and I just shot for the fragrance again last week. I’m still doing all the Hugo Boss stuff, which has been an amazing couple of years with them and that whole transformation. And now there’s a big David Beckham part to that with their new partnership with him, so that’s been a whole new body of work. I’m doing all these campaigns for Michael Kors now, which has been fun to do the past couple of seasons. I’ve got a great team of people together again, and I’ve just been enjoying it and trying to approach it differently, but at the same time still bringing my philosophy that I’ve always had to it—that’s strategic meets creative and bringing those two roles together. I’ve been lucky to be back in the middle of it. 

All images: Courtesy of Ana Sky

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