- Karina stars in Gentle Monster's 2026 Veggie Collection campaign alongside multidisciplinary artist Yosh, set in a surreal, desolate field built around giant tomato imagery, translating what the brand calls "a bizarre obsession" into fashion.
- The Veggie Collection features 10 foldable eyewear designs inspired by vegetable curves, stems, and botanical textures, finished in saturated colors that feel more synthetic than natural.
- Pre-orders went live May 18 in the US and South Korea, with the global launch set for June 5, 2026, supported by immersive pop-up installations across seven cities: Los Angeles, Seoul, Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing, and Bangkok.
- This is Karina's second Gentle Monster campaign, following her 2025 Pocket Collection x Bratz collaboration, cementing her place as a recurring face for the Korean eyewear powerhouse.
Gentle Monster is back with one of its most visually ambitious campaigns yet. The South Korean luxury eyewear brand has tapped aespa leader Karina to front its 2026 Veggie Collection, a ten-piece foldable eyewear line that translates vegetable silhouettes, textures, and saturated colors into glossy, synthetic-looking frames set against a surreal agricultural backdrop.
The campaign, co-starring multidisciplinary artist Yosh, unfolds inside a desolate field where towering tomatoes become the central surreal motif, signature Gentle Monster territory, where the line between editorial photography and CGI deliberately blurs.
This is Karina’s second campaign with the brand. In 2025, she fronted the Pocket Collection in collaboration with Bratz, which included 21 designs and a custom Bratz doll.
Her latest brand moves have been just as high-profile: luxury golf label MARK & LONA named her its first-ever female ambassador in May 2026, and she was appointed global brand spokesperson for Nike in July 2025, becoming the first Korean celebrity and first female K-pop idol to hold the position, followed by a Chanel Beauty ambassadorship later that year.
Gentle Monster has built its celebrity playbook around K-pop collaborations. BLACKPINK’s Jennie starred in three campaigns: Jentle Home (2020), Jentle Garden (2022), and Jentle Salon (2024), before transitioning to Ray-Ban in 2025. More recently, the brand partnered with Disney and Formula One for its 2026 Circuit collection. Karina stepping back in signals Gentle Monster is doubling down on the K-pop formula that helped build its global reach.
On the music front, Karina is confirmed to return for Season 2 of Netflix’s Agents of Mystery in 2026 and is set to perform solo at the Waterbomb festival.
The Veggie Collection is available for pre-order now, with the global launch and pop-up openings beginning June 5.
Takeaways
Gentle Monster isn’t just selling eyewear, it’s selling worlds. The Veggie Collection continues the brand’s strategy of using celebrity campaigns as full-scale art direction pieces, not mere product placements.
Karina returning for a second campaign confirms she isn’t just a one-off face for the brand, she’s becoming part of its ongoing creative universe, much like Jennie was before her.
And with MARK & LONA, Nike, Chanel Beauty, and Prada all on her current roster, Karina is operating at a rare level of multi-sector dominance in the endorsement space.
For Gentle Monster, replacing Jennie with two of the biggest names in K-pop: Felix of Stray Kids and now Karina on return, shows the brand knows exactly how to keep the machine humming.
With Jennie now at Ray-Ban and Karina building history at Gentle Monster, is the K-pop eyewear space officially split between two rival brand loyalties? The Veggie Collection is foldable and compact, does the functional angle signal Gentle Monster is moving beyond pure fashion statements toward everyday wearability?
