Bonobos puts Carl Radke in linen for city summer dressing

Bonobos is betting that linen can do more than suggest a weekend away. On May 19, the brand launched “Cooler in Linen,” a summer campaign fronted by Carl Radke and Ben Waddell and shot at Radke’s Soft Bar in New York, turning a hot city day into a pitch for easy, polished dressing that moves from lunch to late night.

The collection at the center of the campaign is Bonobos’ Summer 2026 linen line, and the brand is not treating it like a narrow capsule. Its current lineup includes shirts, pants, shorts, suits, blazers and outerwear, a spread that makes the case for linen as a full wardrobe foundation rather than a beach-only fabric. Bonobos describes the clothes as breathable, lightweight and effortlessly stylish, language that matches the clothes’ real commercial job: make summer dressing feel simple without looking sloppy.

That is where the casting does the heavy lifting. Jesse Alpern, Bonobos’ vice president of design, said the company wanted the campaign to capture “the energy of summer in the city” in an authentic way. Radke and Waddell, both familiar faces from Bravo’s Summer House, give the line immediate cultural recognition, while Soft Bar, Radke’s non-alcoholic cocktails and functional drinks venue in Brooklyn, supplies the lifestyle hook. The setting makes the linen feel lived-in and current, not posed in a resort fantasy.

Radke said his own summer style leans toward pieces that are “easy,” “fun” and make him feel good, which is exactly the kind of phrasing that helps Bonobos sell linen as practical menswear instead of a vacation uniform. The brand’s day-to-night framing matters too. A linen suit or blazer reads one way in a boardroom and another on a patio, and Bonobos is clearly trying to sell that versatility as the whole point.

There is business strategy behind the styling. Bonobos now sits inside the WHP Global and Express structure that acquired the company from Walmart in 2023 for a combined $75 million, after Walmart had paid $310 million for the brand in 2017. Bonobos stayed headquartered in New York, and founder Andy Dunn later joined WHP Global in an advisory role. That history helps explain the campaign’s clean commercial logic: a brand built on better fit is using recognizable faces and a city setting to make linen feel like the most sensible kind of summer luxury.