Gap signs celebrated designers
L.A.-based fashion designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte, along with New York’s Doo-Ri Chung and Thakoon Panichgul, are the latest high-profile names to lend cachet to a mass-market retailer. In this case it’s the struggling San Francisco-based Gap chain that has tapped into the relatively new talent pool as part of a new Gap Design Editions (GDE) collection hitting stores April 17.
The collection includes three different interpretations of Gap’s signature white women’s shirt by each designer, including tailored camp shirts and belted shirtdresses. It will be sold online and at select Gap locations such as the Hollywood & Highland, Grove and Third Street Promenade stores, at prices from $68 to $88.
The project is similar to the Go International program that has made Target a destination for cheap chic fashion, produced through limited-edition design collaborations. It follows on the heels of a recently announced partnership between Gap and the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, for which Chung won the 2006 award for emerging talent and Panichgul and the Mulleavys were runners-up. As part of the agreement, future CFDA winners will design collections for coming seasons.
Gap seems to have learned a lesson from last fall’s barely publicized collaboration with designer Roland Mouret: The limited-edition collection will be promoted in an ad campaign featuring photographs of the designers alongside models wearing their handiwork.
-- Adam Tschorn
