Karen Walker (Q4893)
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Karen Walker is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Karen Walker |
Karen Walker is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Karen Walker, in a reflective mood as she designed her first collection of the new decade, leaned into the things and people that she most cherishes. “For me it comes back to [the question of] where is my comfortable place—where is the place that intuitively, emotionally, aesthetically, kind of feels safe and familiar?” But then also: “How do I change that? What prism do I put that through? How do I challenge it?” The answer to the first query was easy: The designer’s happy place is clearly the 1960s and 1970s, and she channeled those halcyon days best in a 1930s-by-way-of-the-Me-Decade tea-length dress with sleeve interest; pussy-bow blouses; charming slightly ballooning shorts; and no-fuss sleeveless midis. The retro vibe was strong; what gave familiar silhouettes newness was fit and fabrics. The play between matte vegan leather, floral pajama silk, and a fluttery eco-chiffon was felicitous. Also in the mix was a checked linen that gave a welcome crispness to the lineup.Walker’s detailed show notes covered a lot of territory, from the bourgeoise to garden design. The quote from Pulp’s 1995 hit “Common People” would have been enough. It gently introduced the topic of class— also signified by the pearl choker the model wears in the look book—in a way that complements Walker’s ironic-but-with-love approach to design. This lyrical tidbit also gets to the season’s real essence: “The whole collection,” the designer says, “is dedicated to Jarvis [Cocker], who brushed past me walking into the Wolseley [Hotel] one day and whom I’ve always found an inspiration.” The collection is stronger for this 1990s tomboy refraction, adding some (Brit) pop and saving it from becoming too saccharine.In the ’60s and ’70s—as today—choice equals freedom for women (grown-ups). With little-girl looks like a frilled-lace baby doll dress and a floral pinafore, Walker hewed too closely to her inspiration instead of pushing against it. Sometimes you have to set the things you love free.
5 February 2020
Spring found Karen Walker reaching back in time. Way, way back, to about A.D. 350 when her collection muse, Hypatia, a mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and, according to the designer, “proto-feminist” lived. Like today, it was a time of great upheaval, but Walker remained focused on her woman, rather than get into politics, or stretching beyond her groove.The play between masculine and feminine is central to Walker’s work and she loves to pair an airy chiffon blouse with romantic sleeve details, say, with a mannish trouser—or to juxtapose a natural fiber like linen against a more high-tech one like acetate. The designer is also partial to a ’70s vibe, hence the pointy Me-Decade collars on a shirt and pants set with a deep blue and yellow mosaic print with key motifs.Based in New Zealand, Walker is at quite a remove from New York, but she’s on the same wavelength as many designers here, who have embraced smocking for Spring. (Walker’s pieces are hand-smocked, by the way.) Every closet needs some hero—or in this case, goddess—pieces; in Walker’s Spring collection these were the fish-patterned mosaic prints covered with clear sequins that shimmer like scales. Quite the catch.
13 September 2019
“Sky” is the title of Karen Walker’s latest collection, a sumptuous picture of a “postmodern Venetian getaway” that came from a surprisingly quotidian place. “I didn’t see much blue in what we’d been doing recently, and it’s always in my wardrobe,” the designer shared over FaceTime from New Zealand, wearing a blue sweater and scarf. “So I felt Resort, Cruise, let’s go blue, which took us to sky and cherubs and clouds and things mercurial, ephemeral.”Her beautiful spectrum of blues came from objets d’art like a Wedgwood china dish, a cerulean Lladró ceramic figurine, or a blue Murano glass vase. To accompany her central cherub print, Walker leaned into her rococo references, best illustrated by the standout silk midi dress with a smocked bodice, puffed sleeves, and a delicate flounce at the hem. To offset them, however, she wisely included several clean, fitted rib knits and plenty of soft tencel-blended chambray separates to ground the collection.Yet it was hard not to get swept up by her skyward fantasy: the swirl of a pale blue organza skirt, the gorgeous ring of cobalt tie-dye on a white peasant blouse and skirt. “They’re streaky lines, cutting through like clouds,” she said. The effect was heavenly.
7 June 2019
Karen Walker’s hometown of Auckland has been blessed by seven perfect weeks of New Zealand summer—no surprise that the designer’s latest collection reflects this perennial sunshine state of mind. Called Bloom, it was Walker’s distillation of a “beatific languor,” a marked change from the eclectic intellectualism that has characterized more recent seasons. “We were coming from a place where you can imagine a languid idleness,” she said. “Oak trees, big stretches of lawn, wicker deck chairs.” (For that, Walker looked no further than suburban Auckland; her idyllic lookbook was shot next to a neighborhood tennis court.)Of course, this being Walker, that train of thought led her to Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury set: “So I was imagining that lazy Sunday afternoon: silk palazzo pants, perfect grass, and being quite lazy, really, with these lounge-y clothes.” Loungewear by Walker’s definition meant denim separates, polka dot palazzo pants, and a William Morris–inspired paisley and oak print, dappled across mini to midi dresses and blouson tops. She played chiefly in tonal colors, such as sun-bleached off-whites with earthy browns, to soothing effect. The collection evoked an untempered optimism that was nice to see.
17 February 2019
Onwards and Upwards is the title of Karen Walker’s latest collection, a sporting reference to this season’s inspiration—the game of chess, where pawns must move forward—and her own personal brand of brimming optimism. The thoughtful positivity that informs her work always results in a pleasant lineup, made for the same sort of intellectual gamine who doesn’t take thingstooseriously (just the right amount).Walker honed in on two female chess legends: Sonja Graf, a German chess master of the ’30s who played in bookish pantsuits, and Lisa Lane, a ’60s bombshell remembered as the sport’s glamour girl in more soigné collared shirts. Together, they formed the perfect jumping-off point for Walker’s continued toying and twisting of historically masculine and feminine dress codes. A super-slouchy walnut-color suit was a highlight, so was the very simple proposition of a slate gray cashmere turtleneck tucked into crisp suit pants, cropped like high waters.Details were intentionally focused from the neck up (think: ruffled and pointed collars), as Walker envisioned the wearer seated at a chess table. A selection of frothier black tulle items featured sculptural volume around the neck and shoulders, as well, to resemble the curves of the queen or a bishop, as readily as the Eames stools scattered on set recalled headless pawns.
7 December 2018
One long-ago season, when Karen Walker used to bring her collections to New York Fashion Week, the New Zealander retired post-show to an idyllic orchard upstate, where just-ripened apples were falling from trees and emitting an incredible scent. “We spent the day riding around on a flatbed truck, this magical kind of dappled light hitting the trees, picking apples, eating apple pie,” Walker says. “It felt cliché, like, my God, I’m actually doing this. It’s real; it exists.”Ever highbrow, Walker calls it her Proustian madeleine moment, and the visceral American memory shaped her Spring 2019 collection. Of course, it wouldn’t be Karen Walker without a wry twist. So her apple is no perfect Golden Delicious, but the bad one in the barrel, inspired once more by her perennial muse, Sissy Spacek in Terrence Malick’sBadlands.This meant a Midwestern ’70s mood: a great deal of thick, utilitarian workwear fabrics made into a perfect pair of very long and high-waisted denim flares or rust-color corduroy pants with a paper-bag waist. There were many conservative, churchgoing staples like organza circle skirts and cashmere twinsets, but Walker’s strong use of color and proportion kept everything cool, not dowdy.Into the mix, she blended Garden of Eden references, namely a charming medieval apple tree print—pale blue with Golden Delicious or pink with Red—that had a small serpent concealed within its branches. A great deal of fun to consume.
9 September 2018
It’s always fun when Karen Walker lets her imagination run wild. When confronted with the trite question all designers must consider for Resort—what to pack for the perfect getaway?—her ingenuity lead to an unexpected retort: What more idyllic destination than heaven?No sacrilege here: Walker kept it light and airy for Heaven Knows, as though one had gently floated above the clouds. That meant heaps of organza, often in the frothiest shade of blue, and suggestions of liturgical vestments or choir robes in the gentle surplice-like smocking of a tunic top and matching miniskirt. To the mix, Walker added several sweet little prairie dresses—or, reworked communion gowns, if you prefer—with high necks and high hems, plus a pleasing puff sleeve and pleating at the collar.Splashes of “papal red” appeared chiefly on separates with a botanical print that loosely referenced Pocomania, a Jamaican folk religion. The chief graphic, however, was an engraved illustration of a single hand with pointed finger akin to a Michelangelo fresco, namely theCreation of Adamon the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The suggestion? “That heaven can be found anywhere,” Walker says. Look no further than the collection’s standout: A celestial blue organza dress with a series of puffed, papier-mâché–like blooms along the hem. Sheer heaven.
14 June 2018
From her remote perch out in Auckland, New Zealand, Karen Walker may be removed from the thick of things, but this vantage point has actually placed her ahead of the curve in several ways. The chief example is the global, “multi-hemispheric” approach she has applied to her namesake brand (based in the Southern Hemisphere, when much of her clientele is in the North) and which formed the starting point for Fall 2018. “We’re thinking about seasons from a very global perspective, not by what the weather is like [any one place in particular],” she says. “This could be worn in 110 degrees in Singapore at 100 percent humidity, or it might be worn in minus 10 degrees in London, so we just go, ‘Let’s make something new and cool.’ ”On those points, Walker certainly succeeded with Love Letter, the title of her new lineup. “That idea of things going around the world got us thinking about old-fashioned post,” she says. “That excitement of something moving from one place to the next.” The collection’s key graphic is a series of Edwardian postage stamps etched with grazing giraffes and runaway girls with bindles, collaged together in a slapdash manner to suggest a box of stamps upturned. It was inspired by the collection of stamps she amassed from ages 6 to 11 and recently rediscovered at her mother’s house. “My father was in the travel business, and my brother and I used to fight over the really glamorous stamps,” she recalls, laughing. Though an Edwardian stamp print might sound busy on paper, in Walker’s hands it worked beautifully as a brick or navy jersey turtleneck that clung to the body, offset by eight layers of sky blue organza skirt.That pale hue ran throughout, pulled from the color of old airmail envelopes; navy and scarlet were also dotted throughout as a gesture to the postman’s stripes. Elsewhere, there was a textbook botanical print to suggest an English cottage garden whose creeping roses had been left untended and allowed to grow wild. There lies the charm of this collection: Beneath the feminine dress is a hint of subversion. Take the floor-length vinyl skirt in a lurid shade of acidic yellow that pops halfway through the lookbook. “It’s kind of a funny note, the yellow, but it just looked so strong and almost jarring against the peaches and tans that it felt right because it was so wrong,” she says. “I always quite like that—that ‘ooh wow, that got my attention.’ ” It certainly did.
1 March 2018
Karen Walker presented her resort 2021 collection to Vogue Runway from the interior of the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, a posh club that is currently home to the America’s Cup trophy. Seen via Zoom, far-away Auckland, sheltered by Waitemata Harbour and almost COVID-free, might as well have been Neverland. Though there was kismet involved in the making of this nautical-themed collection, the garments themselves have a ship-shape functionality that feels topical.Founded in 1871, the Squadron will celebrate its sesquicentenary (150th anniversary) next year, around the time this collection will be available; a happy synchronicity that Walker discovered only after settling on her main theme. As she and her team were playing with the idea of a fictional yacht club it dawned on them that there were many in the city, and they might work with a real one. Declaring, “We’ve gottheyacht club just down the road,” Walker called Squadron, and a collaboration was born. It’s the first of its kind for the club; the season’s prints are pulled straight from the Squadron’s archive or inspired by it.Breton stripes, polka-dot, flag, and post-card-like prints are used in a collection that mixes preppy and sporty staples with pretty, if tepid, Victoriana dresses, some tea-party ready—Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh is the Squadron’s patron. They dresses nod, Walker says, to the history of the club. The designer’s denims and pants, high-waisted with decorative buttons and full or flared legs, look terrific when paired with coordinating jackets or printed blouses, but the collection’s hero pieces are the really functional ones; the windbreakers, raincoats, and hats that look good and work hard—and also fit into narratives that are a bit more inclusive.“The raincoats are real raincoats, they will keep you dry. The colors are punchy, they are bright and vivid, which is what you need in a sailing situation,” Walker explains. “There is a real pragmatism to [the collection]. It’s an elevated version, but I think there is also a romance and nostalgia to it that celebrates our harbor, and harbor, by very definition, is a place of protection.”Building on that idea, Walker’s collection might be seen as a sort of sartorial port in a storm for those who are many nautical miles from Auckland.
29 July 2020
Karen Walker’s approach to her pre-fall collection—and the new decade for that matter—is to start with a blank page. The designer said she’s “embracing the analog” and taking time again to draw with pencil and paper. It’s from the former that the collection, dubbed Graphite, takes its name and grayscale palette.In a bold and successful move, Walker avoided prints, a house signature, to focus on the purity of line. Her silhouette is defined by strong, bold shoulders, and there’s a functional military feeling to some of the outerwear. The designer’s use of pinstripes, particularly effective on a dress with bias detailing, was another take on line, while animal-print jacquard and a metallic knit added pattern and color. Walker used a slash of bright red for her hit skating dress, which she pulled from the archive. Designed in the late 1990s and worn by Björk and Sienna Miller back then, it was made of yards and yards of fabric and created a beautiful sense of movement, which will certainly propel this designer into 2020.
12 December 2019
Shipwrecked. That was Karen Walker’s overarching theme this season, the one into which she tucked a handful of her typically idiosyncratic references. Rimbaud and John Lydon, stranded together on a tropical island—as usual with Walker, the idea made zero sense, until you gave her collection a bit more consideration, at which point it made perfect sense. Haven’t rebels and renegades been feeling a bit marooned of late? Isn’t it tempting to imagine that the dream of another, better, more beautiful world could be nurtured in some offshore utopia?That’s a romantic notion, but Walker gave it some gravitas by means of utilitarian silhouettes. Her key trouser this season was a baggy pant that she turned out in various fabrics—natty Prince of Wales check, punkish plaid laced with gold thread, a hammered satin-like material. And her dresses were similarly no fuss, offered in a variety of lank or blouson shapes. The romance was to be discovered in Walker’s touches of frill and distaff gestures like rough gathers, unexpected asymmetries, and unraveling hems and fringe, all of which got at the idea of civilized looks gone a bit feral. The most eye-catching pieces here, meanwhile, were the ones done in painted landscape prints. A head-to-toe ensemble conjuring a tropical vista seemed to say: If you can’t come to utopia, utopia will come to you. You just have to wear your dreams on your sleeve.
18 December 2017
Oh, to be a fly on the wall in Karen Walker's head. What does her brain get up to, when Walker is perched in her lair down in Auckland, so remote from the major fashion capitals and the topics of conversation common therein? The distance Walker keeps from the fashion throng seems to permit her to let her mind wander equally far afield; it's a safe bet that no other designers are going to be referencing lady adventurers of the Victorian era and Mary Poppins in their collections this season, just as no one else decided to mash up hip-hop and Marie Antoinette for Resort.Anyway. You might say that the true underlying theme of Walker's latest outing was female liberation: Poppins, after all, was an independent single lady who came and went as she pleased, and the women who joined the brigade of explorers and specimen collectors at the apogee of the British Empire were likewise free of the fetters of Victorian society. Walker gave their brio a contemporary spin by emphasizing silhouettes ideal for running around in—baby-doll dresses, baggy jeans, jogging shorts, and track pants. Victoriana was woven through the looks, with pouf sleeves, natty little buttons, and high collars given particular emphasis throughout. Olive drab twill and masculine tailoring gave the collection some grounding, detailed as it was throughout with flounces and frills, while Walker's nutty but appealing monkey prints added a soupçon of traditional Brit eccentricity. Overall, Walker was hitting her usual note of youthful exuberance, but there was a nice deepening of tone here; she seemed to be imploring her female fans to do something with all that energy. Strike out for far-flung lands; make your own rules; think new ideas. It's been working for Karen Walker.
13 September 2017
“Let them eat cake.” Marie Antoinette may or may not have said those words, but they’ve lived on long after her death on the guillotine, in part because we lack for other historical examples of young women delivering a solid clapback. It’s not clear that Karen Walker, who drew on Marie Antoinette for inspiration this season, is any fan of cosseted monarchy; what was clear, seeing the designer’s collection today, is that she likes a girl with attitude. Her mash-up of rococo aesthetics and B-girl vibes was inspired insofar as it located the common spirit between a shade queen (literally!) and tough-talking female plebes.Many of the clothes here came off as pieces that might have been created for a bunch of ’90s-era B-girls storming Versailles. Marie Antoinette’s wardrobe ripped up and mined for parts: the ruffled sleeves applied to a baseball jacket, the bloomers made into short shorts, taffeta gowns reworked into frilly tanks and rompers. For all the oh-so-feminine details in this outing, the vibe was decidedly sporty, with Walker working for the most part in plainspoken fabrics like cotton, seersucker, twill, and denim. Even the taffeta was of nylon, not silk. She also punctuated her looks with graphic tees and sweatshirts that riffed on the Sex Pistols’s famous poster for their single “God Save the Queen.” If you were in any doubt as to whether Walker’s heart was with the common man or the monarchy, those pieces settled the question. In this collection, it’s Marie Antoinette’s cake the proletarians are eating.
7 June 2017
Mutiny! That’s a concept on a lot of women’s minds right now, as they find their values and their priorities under governmental siege. Karen Walker has caught the bug, too, conjuring—for her latest collection—a gang of lady pirates spoiling for a fight. With a tip of the hat to the original girl punk, Vivienne Westwood, and her antiauthoritarian buccaneers, Walker put an unexpected spin on her militant vibe, trading in the typical hard edges of utilitarian garb for blouson shapes with an unapologetically feminine tone. The switch-up felt just right.The utilitarianism of this collection was communicated through its fabrics, with the emphasis on humble textiles such as drill, cotton, and raw denim. But Walker worked these materials into soft, voluminous silhouettes, patterning poufs into trousers and sleeves, and creating a sense of spontaneity by means of cinching and wrapping. Dangling straps and selvedge denim fringe echoed that improvisational feeling. These clothes seemed in process, in a state of becoming to be completed by the women destined to wear them. There was something empowering about that, as though Walker were expressing the principle of mutiny through the design of her clothes. These are the means, her cinches and loosely tied-off belts seemed to say.They’re yours to seize.
9 March 2017
’Tis the season of magical thinking. The giveaway in Karen Walker’s latest collection was the prevalence of unicorns—embroidered ones and those cavorting in fields on wallpaper prints. The unicorns were a witty replacement for the horses you might have expected to see in this country-and-western–inflected outing; given the hint of disco here as well, you might say that Walker was imagining what the rodeo looks like after a few pills. Thumbs-up to that concept.This collection was heavy on the frills. Virtually all of Walker’s tops and dresses were ruffled one way or another, with the effects ranging from the heavy-duty froth of her off-the-shoulder dresses and tops to the flirtatious touch of ruffle on a metallic leather jacket or otherwise austere black silk frock. The sugariness of all those ruffles was counterbalanced by the lineup’s homespun elements—its sharply cut, deep-blue denim; ochre-toned chinos; and generous helpings of gingham and plaid. Even the winsome unicorn print got a bit of humility when rendered in heavy-duty muslin.This was one of those Karen Walker collections where you marvel at her ability to make the ludicrous seem, well, mundane. To coin a trendy phrase, she’s very good at normalizing her flashes of madness and far-flung references, distilling them into a sartorial language every young woman can speak. In a world that currently seems a bit mad on the whole, Walker’s clothes make perfect sense.
13 December 2016
Karen Walker is nothing if not unpredictable in her references. This season, she bested herself, taking inspiration from Babou, the ocelot Salvador Dalí kept as a pet. To be more specific, Walker’s latest collection sprung from her wondering what Babou might have made of his trip from a jungle in Colombia to a suite at the St. Regis. Walker’s supposition was that the big cat, if endowed with human consciousness, would have had a response something along the lines of: WTH?God bless Karen Walker and her weird, weird mind. But if the route she took to arrive at her new collection was an odd and veering one, the appeal of the clothes themselves was altogether direct. There were leopard prints, of course—the ocelot is also known as the baby leopard—done in faux fur or Lurex jacquard, not to mention sweatshirts with punchy wildcat graphics and prints of jungle birds and jungle flora. In general, though, the charm of the collection derived from the way Walker extrapolated Latin-American folk aesthetics into citified looks. Polished takes on the peasant blouse or dress mixed in with boyish tailoring, while the denim and outerwear absorbed the folk influence, coming punctuated by unexpected flounces and frills. A cropped, ruffle-detailed denim jacket looked particularly sharp.But it was hard to pick standouts, in fact, inasmuch as all the pieces here were so cannily done, whether a blouson poplin shirt detailed with pintucks and flounced cuffs, or basic black dresses done in short baby doll or 1940s-inspired mid-calf shapes. The tailoring was typically solid, too. Babou might have been feeling a little WTF about his sojourn in the city with Dalí, but for Walker fans, the reaction to the collection he inspired is more likely to be OMG.
9 September 2016
“May you live in interesting times.” So goes the old curse, and guess what? We do! Interesting times are upon us, and with them come this unspoken prerogative: Pick a side.Now. You can’t expect a designer to fashion a solution to the world’s travails, when heads of state, who are meant to be experts in that kind of thing, are utterly flummoxed by them; what a smart designer, likeKaren Walker,cando is treat her clothes as a medium for expressing the current mood. Walker seems to have picked up on the fact that battle lines are being drawn, and perhaps that’s why her latest outing found her looking back to a previous generation’s contest over who’d get to shape the modern world. Mujer, Walker’s new collection, is a tribute to the female anti-fascists who joined the fray in the Spanish Civil War.The femaleness was the key thing, here. As opposed to rehashing the usual military references—though this collection did feature the de rigueur camo and khaki—Walker made the case for womanly warriors, emphasizing feminine shapes and details with a folksy inflection. Flounced sleeves, shirring and pintucks, pants cut broad as skirts; these elements fused with utilitarian materials and winks of dishevelment to conjure a “Jane get yer gun” kind of attitude. The prettiness of, say, a floral silk dress with a touch of ruching about the collar served as a red herring—as any loyal viewer ofGame of Throneswell knows, the fiercest fighters often come in the most comely of packages. So you can skip the Che-style flak jacket and beret and stick with Walker’s frocks or wide-leg khakis. It won’t matter what you’re wearing when history knocks—just what youdo.
28 June 2016
You can always count onKaren Walkerto name-check a brilliant, if obscure, starting point for her collection. This season it was iconic 20th-century photographer Berenice Abbott—not her work, actually, but what she wore. “Her style was very much androgynous but with a bit of glamour,” said Walker backstage. That juxtaposition was perhaps best exemplified by the roomy denim and khaki pants with elastic waistbands that were often styled with loudThat ’70s Show–esque prints and Lurex knit turtlenecks. Ruffles and blouson sleeves were thoughtful tweaks to some of the designer’s signature silhouettes. And while ruffles seem to be everywhere this season, Walker’s, of course, were a little different, crossing the body asymmetrically. Ruffles for cool girls.Abbott’s personal wardrobe is very much in line with how Walker sees her brand. “We’re always thinking about utility and functionality; everything has to be ready to go, but”—and this is the crucial caveat—“with a sprinkling of eccentricity.” Indeed, what’s useful and versatile to the Karen Walker customer is definitely not for everyone. Take, for instance, a psychedelic blue and purple print, which upon closer inspection was in fact a finely woven lace that appeared on blouses and tops. A little oddball, yes, but the Karen Walker girl will no doubt find a way to wear it to the office.
15 February 2016
Karen Walkerhas always been one of those designers who holds her own verve dear. As the call of traditional trends becomes somewhat obsolete, it's a trait that's paying dividends. Her taste for bygone pop culture makes her collections quiet, yes, but with a charming sense of kitsch that has secured a cult following. Designing from her native New Zealand, Walker imbues her nostalgia-tinged collections with a subtle discretion. Inspired by her newfound love of skiing in Coronet Peak, Queenstown, retro ski echoes could be felt in the ribbed cuffed jeans and elasticated-waist miniskirts. Chalet culture was hinted at in the demure flame-print day dresses and her updates of the ski knit (with rave-bright diamonds adding an unexpected pop to basic black). “I was more interested in the suggestion of sport and movement,” explains Walker. The ruffled putty leather did seem a little off-piste to the alpine mood.Her seventies romanticism aside, Walker's business is built on her expanding accessories range, namely handbags and supersize sunglasses with her signature arrow motif. “The arrow’s a symbol of what our brand stands for—optimism, energy, and an intrepid nature,” says Walker. With tan satchel bags at less than $500 (the most expensive bag is the tote style at $545), Walker is cannily giving her fans something to smile about.
17 December 2015
Karen Walkerhas a thing for the esoteric. Last season she was inspired by obscure British sci-fi seriesSapphire and Steel, and this season it was a remote town in Russia that provided her jumping-off point—and the only link between the two is that you’ve probably never heard of either.Backstage before her show, Walker explained her inspiration: “We came across these photos, taken in the ’80s, of this unmarked town just north of Moscow called Star City, that was a secret military training base for the Soviet Union’s space program. And there were all these photos of these funny, folksy, chintzy Russian sitting rooms but with space suits and space gloves.” Walker, always a fan of intriguing juxtapositions, said she wanted to contrast the “folksy, domestic, and ordinary with high-tech, cutting-edge utility.” And, she continued, “a shot of glam. Because it was quite an elite, glamorous city.” It was difficult to make heads or tails of the idea.But then the show started. If Walker is a little bonkers for using such bizarre, obscure reference points, there is certainly a method to her madness: She was able to suffuse elements of her inspiration into an utterly wearable collection. A small detail like an extended exposed zipper on high-waisted pants recalled the training jumpsuits astronauts might wear, without hitting the viewer over the head with the revelation. You wouldn’t think that space suits and peasant blouses go together, but Walker somehow made it work: Supple gold leather pieces (a nod to the Mercury space suit) were styled with Edwardian blouses and ribbed sweaters (and sometimes topped with a jaunty necktie).There was an ’80s vibe to the whole collection, which exerted itself most boldly in the acid-washed denim pieces. Walker also ingeniously added a horizontal zipper to two floaty white dresses, allowing the wearer to zip off the bottom and create a shorter dress or top. It proved that utility needn’t be slick or complicated to be effective.
15 September 2015
Those guest star couples who paired off on episodes ofThe Love Boat—boy, they were suckers. As any kid reared on reruns of that show understood, the real prize wasn't finding love, it was working on the ship long-term: Who had it better than Julie the cruise director, setting sail for the tropics week after week and getting paid to come up with ways to have fun? You might say that the latest Karen Walker collection was an homage to Julie and her high-seas joie de vivre. The designer'sLove Boatreference was explicit in the lineup's nautical elements, such as anchor prints, mariner stripes, and rope-detailed chambray and denim, and it was suggested in the graphic tropical florals and overall preponderance of oceanic blues. There was something cruise ship-esque, too, about her sculpted tweed and jersey pieces, such as flounced miniskirts and shifts finished smartly with zippers: These items mixed a crisp look and underlying workhorse functionality in a way one typically associates with uniforms. (Air New Zealand should recruit Walker to upgrade the stuff worn by its flight attendants.) Of course, her uniformity wasn't drab; rather, as befitted her theme, she spun her looks in a romantic direction, adding a row of sharp ruffles to a jersey tank, for instance. The most immediately appealing things here, though, were the ones that chucked any sense of strictness and went straight for a vacation vibe. Her gauzy little tank dresses are going to be a lot of girls' summer go-tos; ditto a jumpsuit or A-line mini in denim, a material Walker has rightly been emphasizing of late. This season, the quantity of denim produced by Walker amounted to a capsule collection of its own. The vibe of which you might describe as "Julie the cruise director goes on shore leave."
16 June 2015
The fashion hive-mind being what it is, your average editor runs into a lot of recurring references over the course of a season. That's not a bad thing, per se—trends are trends. It's nice to uncover some common themes amid the chaos. It's also nice, however, to come to a Karen Walker show and be totally gobsmacked. Walker has an absolute genius for seizing on a pop culture obscurity that speaks to the stuff that's in the air, fashion-wise, but does so in its own peculiar accent. This time out, playing with the very-everywhere 1970s vibe, Walker uncorked the British sci-fi seriesSapphire and Steel,which starred (pre-Ab Fab) Joanna Lumley as a terribly chic time-traveling detective.It's safe to assume that a total of zero people in the audience for Walker's show had heard of this series, never mind seen it, but once you knew that was her starting point, a collection that might otherwise have seemed a bit of madness made perfect sense. Of course there was a psychedelic clockface print. Of course there was a Gunne Sax-ish floral dress defaced by black and white stripes. Of course there were ur-'70s shearlings dyed a slick, futuristic shade of sapphire blue. Those shearlings were among the standouts here, as were the tiered mid-calf dresses, which, granted, were most accessible sans graphic stripe.Walker had a choice selection of skirts, notably a circle skirt done in mottled multicolor jacquard or a squishy lilac neoprene, and the A-line minis featuring an M.C. Escher-esque pattern. She also elaborated a couple of themes she introduced last season, such as her knockout flares, and denim, which was given a ton of play here. A wrap-belted, deep-zipped denim jumpsuit will be a strong seller come fall. Indeed, you kind of wanted to jump into Lumley's time machine and grab one now.
16 February 2015
One of the great pleasures of writing about fashion is that designers introduce you to such a wide variety of references—cultural, historical, anthropological. And one of the pleasures of being on the Karen Walker beat is that her seasonal references are pretty much always something you're glad to know about, if you didn't before. This time out, for instance, she was channeling the work of photographer Valerie Finnis, who captured midcentury English gardening culture. Posh biddies, at work on their lilac and rose bushes. The photos are terrific. And so was this collection. The graphic floral prints hit that exact Karen Walker sweet spot where chic meets eccentric. The dresses, tops, and jumpsuits with their whipstitched wrap belts were instantly relatable must-haves—the kind of seasonless clothes that endure in a woman's closet. The patchwork suede pieces, with their swirling, Pucci-esque patterns, were a harder sell, but ultimately convincing. They seemed like the kind of items a girl yearns to find vintage, but never does, really.Best of all, there were the pants. Valerie Finnis' photographs weren't the only thing that Walker dug out of the archive this season; as she explained after the show, her to-die-for, high-waisted, slightly flared trousers had a silhouette only marginally revamped from a collection she turned out ages and ages ago. In dark denim or weathered gray cotton, they looked like the right shape to go under pretty much anything come springtime. As one of those gardening ladies might have it, they were a perennial.
8 September 2014
"I just wrapped up 100,000 miles of travel," said Karen Walker over the phone from her home in New Zealand. "All I want to do is sit on my couch." So for Resort, Walker focused on "anti-going out" clothes. "As non-fancy as possible," she explained.The look was indeed relaxed, but it couldn't be mistaken for loungewear. Walker worked with cottons, linens, and chambrays in blue and white to create dresses, tops, and skirts that were roomy all over. Fabric details—including smocking at the collar of a chambray top, single ruffles on the seams of a popover dress, and floral toile on a short skirt—referenced "old-world domesticity," but this wasn't about muumuus and house slippers. The designer managed to keep things from looking sloppy by being extra careful with proportions. Yes, many of the dresses and tops were A-line, and shoulders were dropped, but nothing was too wide or too low. In fact, there wasn't a pleated-waist skirt or a baby doll dress in the mix that wouldn't work far beyond the backyard. (A gray chambray jacket and miniskirt actually passed as a suit.) Even the collection's novelty graphic—a house cat sitting behind a plotted plant—was more street than sleepover. Walker herself plans to wear loads of this stuff on an upcoming work trip to Korea. "I need to stop by our press room and pull samples," she said. So much for hanging at home.
22 June 2014
"Did you know," asked Karen Walker after her show, "that New Zealand was the first country to give women the vote?" Up with New Zealand! And up with agitation! Walker's latest collection, a tribute to the suffragettes of yore, was one of her best, full of upbeat, easygoing looks with an undercurrent of real toughness. There was lots here to like, much of it in the classic Karen Walker vein—the cropped balloon pants, for instance, or a peacoat in a needlepoint rose print. But the most interesting looks found Walker entering terra incognita: If this wasn't the first collection in which she's used black, it was one of the few, and her graphic (and rather confrontational) hand, hammer, and broken-heart print was a recurring highlight of this show. Walker also used the pattern in a maxi dress of deep red burnout velvets—another atypical look that proved a standout. The designer did well, too, with her blouses and full skirts, which hinted at Victoriana without driving the point home, or for that matter, feeling particularly "vintage" at all. Perhaps the cleverest homage paid to the suffragettes, though, was found in the accessories. As Walker explained backstage, she was interested in the ways the women had turned whatever they had at hand into a prop for their causerestamping pence coins, making their bags into placards, and so on. Taking her cue from that, she turned out bags emblazoned with phrases such as "Liberal, Miserable & Cynical." A rallying call for our time.
9 February 2014
It's said that pink is the navy blue of India. At her show today, Karen Walker made a pretty convincing case for universalizing that rule: Surely, in some chillaxed parallel world, suits like Walker's gauzy, double-breasted number in sun-bleached pink are the norm at the office, rather than navy pinstripes. For the sake of argument, let's call that parallel realm the planet It's All Good, and note that Walker's latest collection appears to have been teleported from that world to our own. Things are basically the same over there, you see, just totally, totally more easygoing. That was the vibe of Walker's looks—both the ones manifestly inspired by India, like the tunic-shaped dress in a "magic carpet" print, worn over gauzy pale blue pants, and the ones that were entirely Western but expressed the same unfussed mood. Walker's baggy trousers conjured the attitude best: They looked smart, but also as cozy as pajamas. What more could a girl ask for? Well, for starters she could ask for a pair of shiny Karen Walker sneakers, made with the brand BePositive, or a bright yellow Karen Walker handbag, produced with Benah. Both collaborations made their debuts on the runway today. And it was all good.
8 September 2013
According to Karen Walker, New Zealand was in the middle of its longest, clearest, and hottest summer in eight years while she was creating her new lineup. "Resort was about capturing the joy and brightness of those long days and endless skies," said the Kiwi designer, who whipped up crisp poplin popover frocks and boyish trousers as well as cute sheaths cut from a tweedy linen—all done in soothing shades of sky blue. Walker kept her head in the clouds with a series of pieces featuring a graphic print inspired by isobaric maps. The standout here was an easy A-line day dress with a light-as-air parka-nylon skirt. It exemplified the collection's play-it-cool mood.
18 June 2013
Karen Walker is a serious music fan, and several of her best collections have been inspired, more or less directly, by whatever it is she's had blasting through her headphones. Today's show found Walker riffing on the venomous post-punk of Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Damned, source material that she translated into one of her most compelling outings in a while. There was a welcome shift in attitude here—simply put, Walker dispensed with quirky and replaced it with a tougher, more rebellious tone of youthful eccentricity. One garment encapsulated the change, a duster-length trenchcoat that was downright intimidating, especially in black. But even pieces that could have been twee, like a pair of cropped trousers with bow-fronted, crisscrossed suspenders, had a punkish je ne sais quoi.Alongside the collection's upgraded toughness, there was a new sense of sophistication, too. Walker had seriously de-fussed her looks, emphasizing clean silhouettes and solid colors, and though it was easy to imagine the typical young Walker fan wearing the collection's simple wrap vests or belted tunic dresses, you could also see a fashionably pared-down woman of any age falling for the allure in those looks. Similarly, Walker's slouchy trousers, flared biker jackets, and neoprene floral skirts could translate into a wide variety of wardrobes and be worn in many ways. To sum up this show with a musical analogy: If the attitude of Walker's collection was the beat that made you prick up your ears and take notice, then the melody you'd find yourself humming days later was its broadly appealing polish.
10 February 2013
It would be tempting to look with bemusement on Karen Walker's latest collection, what with its rocket-ship prints so redolent ofThe Jetsons.; How sweet, you might think; remember when people in the sixties looked at the stars and thought, We'll live there one day! And further: Suckers. We're more cynical now. Except… Coincidentally, Walker's space-race collection arrives at a moment when the landing of the Mars Rover has restored a little of our collective galactic wonder. And so the optimistic tone here felt right and relevant. Though Walker laced the collection with Kennedy-era references—a Peter Pan collar, a short belted shift, a little angora—the clothes never felt vintage-y. She has a knack for the offbeat that kept the clothes modern. Often that was down to her proportions—oddly cropped pants, say, or a slouchy chiffon blouse with low-slung gathers. And even more frequently, Walker updated the clothes with pattern—intarsias and prints of exaggerated dots, and white damask covered in circles. (Her pebbled jacquard, meanwhile, called to mind another Hanna-Barbera classic:The Flintstones.) The palette, too, was modernizing, a quirky mix of sherbet tones, tan, bleach white, and metallic rust. Long story short, this was a sugary collection, with some snap to it.
9 September 2012
Perhaps it's because her pop-up store, The Candy Shop, is opening at Steven Alan this Friday. After showing her Resort collections mostly in New Zealand and Japan, Karen Walker brought it stateside this year. The designer found her starting point thinking about Victorian seaside holidays, filtered through a 1960's lens. This translated to a series of baby-doll frocks, shift dresses, full skirts, and slouchy pants in floral silk crepe de chine and lightweight organza that looked almost translucent. Walker tossed in sailor stripes on cotton dresses and little white tops with ruffled collars, a nod to the playful frilliness that resonates throughout all of her past collections. But it was the range of polka-dot denim chambray pieces—a T-shirt dress, cropped trousers, and a little beanie come to mind—that left us hoping Walker's stateside Resort foray will become a regular thing.
26 June 2012
Karen Walker was definitely the envy of New York fashion week today: As the designer explained before her show this afternoon, she'd wrapped up preparations a day early, and treated herself to ten—yes, ten—hours of sleep. That's the kind of rest pretty much every other designer dreams about, or would if they ever had the chance to go to bed.Walker's relaxed pre-show state speaks to more than the fact that she lucked into a fashion week lie-in, however. As the collection she showed today proved, yet again, Karen Walker is a designer entirely at ease with her brand; season after season, she settles into its slightly offbeat, sweet tomboy idiom like it's an old pair of slippers. This season, bouncing way off the Jules Verne novelTwenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, she added grace notes of bourgeois Victoriana and Brian Jones-esque peacock mod to her signature look.In practice, the Victoriana translated into ruffled collars and trim naval notes of natty wool bouclé and gold hardware; and a fair amount of gold fabric. Boxy coats and jackets in a gold wool-blend material with a black undertone were particularly good, as were the pieces in a brighter gold wallpaper flock. The mod end of the spectrum was capably represented by A-line dresses, paisley prints, and Chelsea boots. Fuzzy sweaters and Walker-signature boyish trousers in yellow and orangy red gave the whole thing a modern pop. It was an eclectic mix of ideas, but Walker tied them together seamlessly..
12 February 2012
Karen Walker doesn't do much black. As she pointed out after her show today, navy is her fundamental neutral—"the god color," as a member of her team put it. Walker's preference for navy over black says a lot about her as a designer: In her eyes, the world is a more cheerful place than it is for most of her peers. And so at first blush, it seemed an odd fit that Walker's inspiration this season wasTaxi Driver, the emblematic film of seventies New York grimness. Finding that out before the show was a bit like hearing that Katy Perry had covered "Love Will Tear Us Apart." Huh? Really?Not that Walker doesn't have a subversive streak; she does. But her collections always have a lot of pep, and she didn't sacrifice any of it as she took on Scorsese's classic. "We were playing with the idea that Betsy and Iris, in that film, represent these two different kinds of American women," Walker explained. "Betsy is feminine and elegant and aloof; Iris is tough and girlish. We wanted to see how we could push those characters through our own look."It hardly seemed possible, but Walker's extrapolations this season relied upon an even more emphatic use of print than usual. Blown-up checks and stripes girded a bunch of microdots and graphic florals, including a bang on-trend tropical floral in turquoise. Walker spun the prints into natty, forties-inspired dresses (Betsy) and pegged pants and little shorts (Iris).There's always a menswear inflection in Walker's collections, and this season was no different: Alongside her signature boyfriend blazers, she also created a terrific, eye-searing print that magnified the texture of tweed, and a supersize houndstooth that was especially good in white and navy. In general, this show had a more formal feeling than is typical for Walker—the real story was those ladylike, forties-style dresses, which fit in nicely with this season's emerging trend of soigné looks. That said, tomboy Walker fans will have no trouble picking out pieces here.
12 September 2011
Karen Walker has been nursing an affection for the Dexys Midnight Runners albumSearching for the Young Soul Rebelsfor about 20 years. So it was probably inevitable that she would eventually tap the record for inspiration, as she has this season with great wit and charm. More specifically, Walker went deep intoYoung Soul Rebels' homage to the Northern-soul scene that had its heyday in the mid-seventies.It's worth talking a bit about Northern soul, because Walker really used the reference. Every weekend, working-class young people would swarm the dance floors at clubs across Northern Britain, the most famous of which was Wigan Casino. The dancing there was athletic and competitive, and it went on all night, and sometimes for entire weekends; then, come Monday, the dancers would return to their jobs on the docks or in the mines."I loved the idea of combining the three ways of dressing that went into the scene," Walker explained after her show today. "There was this very working-class thing, with dockworkers' coats and caps, and then the racerback singlets that were worn for the more athletic dancing. And then," she added, "there was the super-femininity of some of the women's looks. They'd turn themselves out in their Sunday best clothes, with these full skirts that really moved on the dance floor."Walker updated those references nicely. A key motif was black vinyl detailing, which added an industrial edge to wallpaper floral-print blouses and girly pleated skirts, and gave a graphic touch to Walker's pop-color coats. There were ultra-feminine "Sunday best" frocks, like a timeless bias-cut chiffon, and two standout pairs of mannish trousers, one high-waisted with a gentle wide-leg silhouette, the other skinny, cropped, and cuffed. The clothes looked easy and modern, and the inspiration was never too overt, with the exception of the print Walker derived from the souvenir patches the Northern soul-sters used to collect. That was perhaps a little too on-the-nose, but it was still a nice tip of the hat.
14 February 2011
Karen Walker is one of several designers feeling the sixties this season, but she's probably the only one reinterpreting the decade via clothespin prints and parkas made out of Tyvek. And that's the great thing about her: Even when she's mining the conventional, she never forgets to be unpredictable.That was about the situation for Spring, as Walker put her typically youthful spin on sixties silhouettes such as shifts, Beach Boys button-fronts, and clam diggers. Her inspiration was witty: the work of the photographer William Eggleston, from whom she gleaned a Kodachrome palette, a density of print, and a general strategy of elevating the humble. This was true not just with the clothespins and the Tyvek, but with the Perspex jewelry and the prints inspired by curtain fabric—as well as with ruffled clutches made from parka nylon, in lawn green, raincoat yellow, and construction-site orange. The collection's real strength, however, was its outerwear and accessories, in particular those ruffled bags and the high-heel, clog-style, and platform loafers. The loafers were done in collaboration with Australia-based company Beau Coops; the platforms represent her latest outing with Pointer.Walker has always been big on print, and this season, the trend of print-on-print has caught up with her. Individually, there were a lot of winning pieces, but taken all together it was often a bit much. More problematically, some of her ensembles looked kind of pajama-y. (Come to think of it, we strongly encourage Walker to get into the pajama game.)
13 September 2010
Karen Walker approaches each season almost like a jazz musician. She introduces an idea, evolves it in a few directions, and then loops it back around to a fully formed composition. She called the Fall collection Salzburg, USA—an imaginary place where an American take on old-world European wardrobe traditions resides.She opened with a matched look of puffy jacket, blazer, button-front shirt, and skinny cuffed pants all cut in a faded floral that looked like a descendant of the Von Trapp children's curtain couture. The looks that followed seemed to ask, "Just how would Americans dress for the Alps?" Well, if they had Walker's quirky-smart sense of chic, in oversize sheepskin collars, matched jacquard sweater-and-skirt sets, or a kicky, boyish loden suit. Or perhaps they'd turn the tables with a college sweatshirt, corduroys, and a balaclava that approximated either an old-school football helmet or a medieval hood. That last look is from Walker's brand-new casual line, called Runaway, which now encapsulates all her denim, T-shirts, and, from Fall, corduroy pants and sweatshirt pieces with wild, woolly fringe. About half the clothes on the runway were from Runaway.But this isn't Walker's only bit of business news. She recently opened an alternative department store in her native Auckland, New Zealand, that stocks her collection, among others, as well as beauty and housewares. She's also looking to open a second store in Asia. This being her eighth season in New York, perhaps the next stop is Manhattan.
12 February 2010
With its funny printed pants, sailor stripes, and boat shoes, Karen Walker's Spring collection initially read "Nantucket." But the designer's inspiration actually came from an oceanfront an ocean away. Walker has been viewing episodes of the cult sixties British television showThe Prisoner, which details the life of an Edwardian seaside resort that's in fact a jail for retired spies. Ah, now that's a richer source than a New England island that's a sanctuary for billionaires. From it, Walker extracted not only her raw materials—sailor stripes, navy blazers, the Edwardian frill, and jaunty chinos—but also the idea of opposing forces (as in holiday destination as place of incarceration).Hence Walker's quiet subversion of classics: the outré gold zips on a cropped navy trench, for example, or the unexpected bright hues of the boat shoes paired with nearly every look (a new collaboration with cool Brit brand Pointer). And while some of her prints—like a lovely pennant version on jersey dresses and bags—played directly to the seaside theme, she countered the nauticalia with a fab trippy sixties pattern and a China blue toile.The effect of all of the above? Signature Walker, mixed and matched with a sure hand, a bit mad yet wholly infectious. After last season's polished look, this was a return to a more girlish silhouette, but there was certainly enough here to lock in the growing number of Walkerites of all ages.
11 September 2009
She's "Cracked." That was the theme of Karen Walker's show, which had its beginnings in the designer's decade-deep archive, from which she unearthed a favorite print of a broken strand of pearls. "We love the beauty that comes out of catastrophe," said Walker backstage, "and the brittle nature of things."The first look out was anything but broken-down: a quite pulled-together square-shouldered and square-bodied trench over black cigarette pants, punctuated by lipstick-red patent pumps. Soon enough, though, the fissures began to appear—in the crackled leather of a black motorcycle jacket, the breakaway flaps on jersey tops that hung below boxy jackets, and Walker's charming graphics (including the resurrected pearls and a colorful new shattered-china-plate print).She tempered her gone-to-pieces motif with strong and simple silhouettes and, right on trend, paid close attention to the shoulder with a princess sleeve on steroids that appeared on cute sweatshirt dresses and built up in petal-like layers on smart little shifts. It was a strong collection with loads of sellable yet quirky separates. And, frankly, is there a better time for fashion that celebrates the beauty that can blossom after things fall apart?
13 February 2009
It's always fun to hear Karen Walker's free associations on the season. Spring's blithely hopscotched from the Yearning for Zion Ranch (the Texas polygamist compound that was in the news this spring) to voodoo to baptismal dresses to the trippy seventies cult filmHoly Mountain—all of this tied together by a rhapsody of blue.From the old-time prairie look of Warren Jeffs' disciples she borrowed a certain high-collared austerity: buttoned-up shirting in classic oxford cloth, sheer pastel poplins, a quirky chicken print, and a lovely China-print silk voile. There were cuffed and cropped trousers and even a terrific pair of groovy wide-leg jeans. She worked the talismanic motifs of ram's heads and spiders into wearable printed-silk dresses and several highly covetable superfine T-shirts. Despite the general boyishness—one highlight being an adorable, boxy royal-blue shorts suit—she also provided a touch of glam, via chic L.N.D.s (little navy dresses; act like you know) and a peachy leopard print that was a perfect wild take on her cult-y cocktail frocks.
5 September 2008
It was the high-necked frills of Victorian and Edwardian children's clothing that started Karen Walker off this season. "I love all those creamy nightgowns," said the designer backstage. "And we threw in some street elements," she added. While the sweetly ruffled and pintucked look—worked liberally here into blouses and dresses—is an idea that has often been tapped in the past few years, Walker is a talented mix master with a vision that's wholly her own. The designer's turn-of-the-century-meets-street look had a youthquake vibe spanning decades, weaving in both sweetness and grooviness from the sixties and the layered, stripy tee-and-thermal insouciance of nineties grunge. The look gained some of Walker's characteristic whimsy with big, colorful my-gran-just-knitted-this pompom beanies, mittens, and even handbags. But not all was layered and accessorized to the hilt. On the simpler side was a terrific chic black textured silk sheath with ruffled shoulders. Walker's tailored pieces—shrunken tuxedo jackets, blazers, and even slim trousers—also deserve special mention. With the recent opening of her pop-up shop at East Village store Den, New York may soon find that it hearts Karen Walker.
4 February 2008
Eccentricity has a precarious relationship with the fashion industry, particularly in commercially driven New York. But Karen Walker, now in her third season here, has built a solid business on her singular, cheery-but-subversive brand of sartorial whimsy. To wit, she considered adding classic styles to her popular line of eyewear before deciding to just give 'em nothing but big and bold. The result: multiple reorders at Barneys. The lesson: To thine own self be true.For Spring, Walker spun a tale that wove through the garden party of a kooky-chic neighbor before winding up on the track at Churchill Downs—the latter being the result of watching the Marx Brothers classicA Day at the Races, as well as of a longtime obsession with jockeys. "They've always been in my book of things I'd like to do a collection about," the designer explained after the show. As is often the case with Walker, it all made charming sense in the execution. There was a real freshness to thirties-style floral tea dresses and seventies-style wide-legged pants topped with floppy hats, knotted scarves, and Rachel Zoe-worthy sunglasses. From the racecourse, Walker took jodhpurs, zippered jackets, and bobbled caps, transforming them into kicky, tomboyish looks that fulfilled both the sporty and gender-bending quotas that seem to be requirements in a Walker affair. The designer also turned the graphic silks of a jockey's uniform into polka-dot shifts and harlequin blouses. Amidst this mélange was a pair of understated black dresses; even eccentrics need a day off now and then.
5 September 2007
For her second show in New York, New Zealander Karen Walker chose as her muse a thirties comic-book superheroine, one who leads a double life. Such a whimsical starting point could have translated into runway disaster, but Walker knows how to finesse a slightly off-kilter theme. Pretty caped sleeves on printed blouses and dresses subtly echoed standard-issue superhero fare. The designer likes to pair masculine with feminine, and here she cut menswear wools into Depression-era silhouettes of the sort that once populated Katharine Hepburn's closet. These were layered with Lycra pieces in a graphic lightning-bolt print, adding a fresh pop of humor to the serious tailoring.Along the way, Walker managed to weave in several disparate elements—from bright nylon anoraks to a covetable but relatively plain-Jane black day dress—without producing the jarring feeling of a phone-booth quick-change. A year in, this designer is already establishing herself as another exciting part of the city's growing fashion expat contingent.
2 February 2007
After eight seasons in London, well-traveled New Zealander Karen Walker is ready for new frontiers. The UK capital's loss was New York's gain as she showed a spring collection that was long on the skewed charm that's her signature. She claimed inspiration from Land Girls (the women who worked the farms in England while their menfolk were away at the front during World War II) and there were discernible echoes of the forties in the floral prints, puff sleeves and baggy pants. But Walker's real focus, as always, was on the hybrid of female and male. It's that fashion clich¿ about the woman who slips into her boyfriend's clothes in the morning, except in Walker's capable hands, it feels fresh and slightly subversive.In this collection, for instance, floral bloomers were worn with a pinstriped waistcoat, an organza dress was topped by a net T-shirt, and neon nylon parkas added a mod boy element. The look is sexy with a coolly ambiguous twist, and it's easy to see why Walker has galvanized a stellar clientele of young Hollywoodites. If the show occasionally played like Karen's Greatest Bits for people who know about her, it was a smart way to introduce her work to those who don't.
8 September 2006