Hari Nef, Carole Radziwill, Aerin Frankel and eight more New Yorkers carry the season from Lincoln Center to Brooklyn in a campaign built on a simple bet: the city moves fast, and the right bag moves with it. Some brands photograph New York. MZ Wallace casts it.
The SoHo-born accessories label unveiled “New York Icons” on Tuesday, a fall 2026 campaign that reads like a roll call of the city’s most interesting commuters. The lineup includes actress Hari Nef and former Real Housewives of New York City star Carole Radziwill. There is Team USA Olympic gold medalist Aerin Frankel and New York City Ballet principal dancer Tiler Peck. Chef Tara Thomas. Goldbelly founder Vanessa Ariel. Bugaboo chief commercial officer Jeanelle Teves. Style creatives Laura and Nicolas Herbert. Influencers Shelcy and Christy Joseph.
Eleven New Yorkers in all, chosen, the company says, for what they do and where they do it. Photographed by Ryan Dorsett against hometown backdrops that run from Lincoln Center to Brooklyn, they carry MZ Wallace bags like people who actually have somewhere to be. Because they do.
The campaign is, by the brand’s own description, a love letter to New York City, and the timing is pointed. MZ Wallace is now past a quarter-century old, founded by Monica Zwirner and Lucy Wallace Eustice out of a shared affection for the city’s particular style and personality. Zwirner, a former stylist whose clients included Gucci, and Wallace Eustice, a one-time accessories editor at Harper's Bazaar e Lei, bet on a counterintuitive formula: a chic, durable bag in featherweight nylon with the finish of Italian leather and pockets where you actually need them. The bet paid off. MZ Wallace became the bag on the arm of the city’s fast-moving set, and the founders joined the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 2016.
“We’ve always designed for dynamic, multifaceted lives on the go, which to us is quintessentially New York,” Zwirner told WWD. “This campaign was an opportunity to reflect on the brand’s evolution while showcasing the distinct personalities and style that celebrate the vibrant and dynamic culture of New Yorkers.”
Wallace Eustice frames the project in terms of tempo. “New York has a style and energy that is constantly evolving but never goes out of stile,” she said. “We think about our bags in much the same way. They’re designed to feel relevant today and for years to come, becoming part of the way people live and move through the city. This campaign pays homage to that enduring spirit – celebrating where we started while continuing to design for where people are going.”
The casting shows that the MZ Wallace community is as varied as the city it serves. An Olympic goaltender and a principal ballerina share the frame with a chef, a food-marketplace founder and a Bugaboo executive, proof that the brand’s real category is not handbags but days in motion. “Individually, they are empowering – and together, they represent the breadth of the MZ Wallace community and the many ways people move through their days,” Wallace Eustice said. “Their lives are busy and varied, and MZ Wallace bags are designed as companion pieces to move with them.”
The campaign kicks off the fall 2026 assortment, which lands in two drops. On Sept. 15, MZ Wallace introduces 23 new iterations of its bestsellers in black velvet, Highland Plaid shearling, and cognac nylon, joined by the Daily Tote, an “elevated take” on the Metro Tote. On Sept. 24, the new Frankie style, worn by the Joseph sisters in the campaign and offered in small and medium totes plus a bucket silhouette, arrives in classic black and a deep seasonal claret, with the claret also carried into the Madison line. All of it will be available on mzwallace.com.
For all the name recognition, nothing about the project feels aspirational in the usual fashion-campaign sense. The bags are not sold as keys to a fantasy life. They appear to be doing their actual job, on the arms of people who already have one. New York style was never a single look, the campaign argues. It is the ability to keep pace with a city that does not slow down. MZ Wallace has been making that argument for more than 25 years with bags that weigh almost nothing and hold almost everything. In “New York Icons,” the icons set the pace. Their bags, as always, keep up.
Images Courtesy of MZ Wallace
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