American Eagle Taps Another Iconic Blonde for ‘Great Jeans’ Holiday Campaign
The latest star joins the ranks of Sydney Sweeney and Travis Kelce.
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Just in time for the holiday season, American Eagle has launched a new ad campaign centered around the great American tradition of gifting jeans—and they’ve tapped yet another beloved blonde bombshell to front it.
The retailer has hired Martha Stewart, 84, to be the face of its holiday campaign.
A video posted on Stewart’s Instagram features the businesswoman in a bedazzled denim top working in a denim holiday workshop. The set is complete with a garland of denim pockets and denim stockings and features the former stockbroker wrapping gifts in denim wrapping paper with denim bows.
Stewart famously spent five months in jail in 2004 for insider trading. Since her release, she has remained in the public eye: doing everything from appearing as a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover girl in 2023 to winning a Sports Emmy Award for her and Snoop Dogg’s coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games in France.
Mike Egerton - PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images
Martha madness has been at a high with her Netflix documentary from 2024, further re-igniting the national interest in our favorite early-aughts TV personality. She also launched a skincare company, Elm Biosciences, this fall, in partnership with her dermatologist, Dr. Dhaval Bhanusali.
Martha Stewart in 2025.
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This summer, American Eagle’s collaboration with Sydney Sweeney was the subject of weeks-long backlash.
In Sweeney’s ad, she breathlessly whispers about how “genes are passed down from parents to offspring,” her blue eyes and great “jeans.” Many found the puns about jeans and blonde-haired, blue-eyed genes to gesture too closely towards eugenics.
Sydney Sweeney's American Eagle ad seen outside of an American Eagle store in 2025 in New York City.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Since then, the company has doubled down and the Christy actress herself has also finally brushed off the controversy.
Is American Eagle’s choice to go with yet another blonde-haired, blue-eyed spokesperson a coincidence, given the controversy from this summer? Or are they just picking a more definitively iconic American figure in Martha Stewart? Probably the latter.
In an interview with AdWeek about the Martha campaign, American Eagle CMO Craig Brommers said, “When people think of an iconic holiday host, people think Martha Stewart.”
He does have a point. After all, who among us hasn’t given a harried view to one of Martha’s gift-wrapping tutorials at the eleventh hour on Christmas Eve?