American Eagle has found its holiday surprise: Martha Stewart in jeans. After a year of heavy publicity and media storms sparked in part by its Sydney Sweeney “great jeans” campaign, which drew accusations of praising “great genes” and even prompted a White House-level reaction, the fashion brand is shifting to a more conventional, nostalgia-leaning pitch ahead of the U.S. holiday season.
Wearing American Eagle denim, the 84-year-old lifestyle and cooking icon is launching a new content series for the retailer called “Martha Wraps the Gifts in AE.”
In Adweek, American Eagle marketing chief Craig Brommers said the partnership with Stewart lets the brand expand beyond its core Gen Z audience to older shoppers who often buy for them. While Stewart has multigenerational appeal, he said, awareness of her brand and image has grown among Gen Z in recent years.
Thanks to her rising presence on social media and her recent Netflix documentary, Brommers said Stewart is “at a peak of popularity across many generations.” “When people think of an iconic holiday host, they think of Martha Stewart,” he said. “This is an unexpected partnership, but it’s the right one.”
With the critical holiday shopping period beginning during Thanksgiving week, American Eagle wanted to surprise consumers with its latest marketing chapter, Brommers said.
“We know the world is watching American Eagle campaigns right now,” he said, hinting at the brand’s recent high-profile collaborations with Sydney Sweeney and Travis Kelce. “It’s important for us to have a plot twist to our story. But those twists have to fit a strategic intention,” he added. “Our intention is to make sure American Eagle jeans are top of mind when people shift into gift-buying mode.”
The campaign will run mainly across social media, digital platforms and television. “We wanted the media mix to reflect the goal of the campaign, which is to connect people,” Brommers said.
The Stewart partnership also supports American Eagle’s broader strategy of leaning on nostalgia through familiar figures, Brommers said, pointing to past holiday products and content featuring characters like the Grinch and Snoopy.
After the holidays, the brand plans to keep “making big moves in big moments,” Brommers said. “We have permission not only to participate in culture, but to define culture. All of this needs to align with our brand platform: we want people to understand that American Eagle makes great jeans, for everyone.”
The move comes after American Eagle’s campaign with Sweeney sparked a full-blown cultural fight. Sweeney appeared in an ad built around the slogan “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans,” saying in the spot: “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring and often determine traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue.” Because the ad played on the phrase “great genes,” many liberal and far-left critics attacked it as praising “white supremacy,” with some saying it echoed Nazi race rhetoric.
The ad even drew a reaction from President Donald Trump. “Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the hottest ad out there,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “It’s for American Eagle, and the jeans are flying off the shelves.”