Stella McCartney’s new campaign has drawn backlash from the brand’s own community. It also tests a question the industry keeps circling: what happens when a sustainable brand uses mainstream fashion’s tools to reach mainstream consumers?
Kylie Jenner in Stella McCartney's "Wild Horses" campaign, directed by Gia Coppola. Photo:Stella McCartney
Stella McCartney released “Wild Horses,” a short film for its Winter 2026 collection starring Kylie Jenner and directed by Gia Coppola. In a post announcing the campaign, McCartney said she wanted “to show a woman from all different sides and tap into a more vulnerable, gentle and feminine side of Kylie in connection with nature.”
The casting sparked criticism on Instagram, where commenters questioned how Jenner’s lifestyle and business ventures fit with a brand built on environmental responsibility and animal welfare.
The reaction follows a familiar pattern. When sustainable brands adopt the tactics of mainstream fashion, whether that’s celebrity casting, trend-driven marketing or Black Friday promotions, they’re often accused of compromising their values. Yet a recurring theme at the 2026 Sustainable Fashion Forum was that leading with sustainability mostly reaches a niche audience. If sustainable fashion wants to reach mainstream consumers, few people are more mainstream than Kylie Jenner.
So the question isn’t only whether the casting fits Stella McCartney’s values. It’s whether a sustainable brand can use mainstream influence to reach new customers without losing the ones it already has.
The commercial pressure
For Stella McCartney, the stakes may also be financial. In January 2025, McCartney announced plans to buy back LVMH’s minority stake in the business. The latest available accounts for the company’s UK business show sales fell 27% to £16 million in 2024, while pre-tax losses widened to £33.6 million from £25 million the year before. In December 2025, The Guardian reported that directors had warned the business could run out of cash by 2028 and may consider alternative sources of funding.
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The brand needs more paying customers, and Jenner can introduce its products to an enormous audience. But will those people buy?
The distinction between an audience and a customer base came through at SFF26 in a session with Dana Davis, founder of Dana Davis Consulting and former sustainability leader at Mara Hoffman. Drawing on her experience at the brand, she explored why being respected, culturally relevant and deeply loved doesn’t necessarily generate enough sales to sustain a business.
Buying attention vs. building desire
Jasmine Bina, cultural futurist and founder of Concept Bureau, explored what it takes to build desire. Her argument was that sustainability needs to connect to something else people want for themselves, whether that’s identity, self-expression or belonging. Fittingly, she described this as “Trojan horsing the cause”: giving people a reason to choose a sustainable product through something they already want, rather than relying on sustainability alone to motivate the purchase.
But she also distinguished buying influence from building cultural relevance. A celebrity partnership can bring an audience to a brand, but deeper relevance comes from understanding what people are feeling and aspiring to, and creating a brand that gives those feelings expression.
The real test
For Stella McCartney, the test is whether Jenner’s influence creates demand for the brand’s products, or leaves the attention focused on Jenner herself. Will the partnership make her audience want to become the brand’s customers, or just admire Jenner wearing the clothes? And if it alienates existing customers, will the new sales outweigh those it risks losing?
Sustainable fashion says it wants to reach the mainstream, and reaching the mainstream may mean using its tools and accepting that the core community won’t always approve. Whether that trade is worth it depends on what those tools build: lasting desire for the products, or attention that moves on with the next campaign.
