Sep 8, 2008

When Gap Met Colette

View more photos in the gallery >>

At the Gap presentation on Sunday afternoon, the first spring collection under creative director Patrick Robinson, power editors buzzed around drinking fruit punch and looking totally unfazed by the heat. After spending a summer away from the fashion scene, the clothes on the editors' backs looked shockingly good. I'm seeing a lot of summer looks still—gladiator heels, harem pants, paper-thin T-shirts (the 300-dollar variety that drape in a lovely way but pill the instant you touch them, god forbid you carry a handbag). The weather should get cooler in a few days, so I'll let you know what the editors are wearing then. In the meantime, of course, a great way to keep up is on Style.com.

So how did the Gap collection look? Colorful and smart. Chicago's fashion editor Stacey Jones especially liked a slouchy white blazer with full-legged seersucker pants. I was happy to see that the popular Pierre Hardy-designed shoes are back. The highlight of the presentation was turning the corner and seeing Karlie Kloss, Chicago native and model wunderkind. You may remember her from our March story; now she can be seen in Gap ads, too.

Had my Saturday flight to JFK not been delayed for four hours in D.C. due to torrential rain, I would have gone straight to Gap upon dumping my bags—or rather to the pop-up store on 54th and 5th, where the retailer has teamed up with the über cool Parisian boutique Colette. Like recent parings of iconic mass market brands and high-end boutiques (Target and Opening Ceremony, or Kate Moss for Topshop and Barneys), the Gap/Colette collaboration was destined to disappear quickly. In fact, it lasted about a day. By Sunday evening (the earliest free moment I had to visit the store), almost everything had been sold.

A few not-yet-pillaged items included grey, jersey-covered, bowtie bags; caps; and Repetto ballet flats. But it was the T-shirts I was after. There were so many cool New York-Paris artist collaborations, like a shirt co-designed by Ruben Toldedo and Jean-Philippe Delhomme, or another by Miss Tic and Claw Money that says "Go Homme." Alas, those were all gone.

I almost took the one with the Statue of Liberty smoking, but in the end, I chose the Artus- and Peter Arkle-designed shirt—a boxer with little men and women beating him up, Gulliver's Travels-style (the mini boxers are using French and English expressions—trust me when I say it's a work of art. It makes me laugh, at the very least).

The manager of the pop-up store told me that Colette owner Sarah Lerfel was blown away by the response: they sold 1,000 T-shirts in one day. He said they'd expected that stock to last a month. Now, come on. Doesn't that seem like the beauty queen batting her eyelashes over a compliment—a Colette/Gap collaboration? Of course this would happen! Mais, bien sur, now that I have my very own piece of wearable art, I appreciate how limited the collection was.

Photography: Elisabeth Fourmont

Posted at 06:16 PM in Paris Fashion Week | Permalink

 Email  Print  del.icio.us  digg  yahoo!  Comments  Feed

Subscribe to Fashion Week Blog : Paris Fashion Week