"We are absolutely invested in emerging talent. Part of us has always been about celebrating young designers," Marka Hansen, president of Gap North America recently told WWD about the chain’s decision to bring in upcoming designers to collaborate on a limited edition collection
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of white shirts. As part of their partnership with the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund to promote fresh design talent, Doo-Ri Chung, Thakoon Panichgul, and Kate & Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte have all been hired to create white shirts - a Gap staple for 35 years – retailing between $68 to $88 as part of the Gap Design Editions. "Throughout history people have always tried to redesign the classic white shirt — that's what made it so exciting,” says Chung about her shirtdress inspired by iconic American sportswear designer Claire McCardell.
The ad campaign in which the designers appear with their designs - the only way to discern who designed which pieces - was shot by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, and stars fashion model A-listers like Stella Tennant, Liya Kebede and Carmen Kass. The campaign will run in high profile outlets like The New York Times, WWD, and the May cover of Vogue. "Vogue has a long tradition of supporting young talent — in particular, our local talent — to secure a brilliant future for American fashion,” adds Vogue’s Anna Wintour. “And Gap's Design Editions project…will give a boost to the three CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund winners, and bring their wonderful designs to a much bigger audience."
However, whether the Gap Design Editions collaboration helps the ailing Gap out of its prolonged slump remains to be seen. "Such short-term design initiatives are positive indications of their intention to improve, but it will probably require at least two to three years of reexamination and re-engineering before Gap can reclaim some of its former status," opines Arnold Aronson of Kurt Salmon Associates. "They must revision the business in terms of merchandise thrust, fashion sensibility, depth and breadth of assortments, size and number of stores." Moving toward less expensive, faster fashion is probably the solution, agrees Mark Montagna, an analyst at C.L. King and Associates. "They need to define their market, which is what they are working on. I believe they need to buy with greater breadth and less depth and run it more like the H&M and Forever 21 where you get faster fashion. Their strategy of buying deep and narrow just encourages customers to wait for the sales…Gap should be doing what H&M does — get a collection by someone like Madonna or Karl Lagerfeld. These are people America has heard of."
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