Designer DETAIL - Karen Walker
Karen Walker is a New Zealand-born fashion designer with a reputation for her original, effortless and unpretentious style. Her work and influence are so prolific she even has a range of Karen Walker Paints (house paint to be exact) as well as Eyewear and Jewellery.
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Her designer bio reads like a roll call of fashion and design's top awards encompassing those which recognise technical skill for one, as well as the kind of word-on-the-street type cool it's impossible to fake.
As close to a household name as any Kiwi fashion designer is ever going to get, Walker has retained her edge through the years and perhaps this is due to the quiet life she leads in New Zealand away from the scenesters who deem her eternally cool. Isolated, perhaps. On the pulse? Definitely.
Walker's collections are that high-casual mix which works so well in Australia and so it seems - the world. With one foot in tailoring and the other in street, she's equal parts ethereal, flimsy floral dress as beautifully sloppy, geek-chic.
The recurring theme in her collections is taking extremes and pushing them together - masculine and feminine, tailored and street, luxury and basic. Overall the label has a feeling of effortlessness and has been described by the UK's Independent newspaper as being "The kind of look that provides a means of appearing cool but not trying to hard, cute but not saccharine, alternative but not self consciously so."
The scope of her business, popularity and power are illustrated by the fact that Walker shows her collections each season as part of New York fashion week as well as being housed in permanent showrooms in London, New York and Sydney.
Most recently, Walker was awarded the 2007 Prix de Marie Claire award for best creative talent, and at the artier end of the scale, she has been included in Phaidon's recent book Sample which curates the 100 most influential designers to emerge in the last six years and Taschen have included her in their Fashion Now 2 book which highlights the world's most important 160 designers as selected by i-D magazine.
Recent collaborative ventures include a pop-up store in New York's East Village concept store The Den, a make up project with Boots 17 in the UK and a t-shirt collaboration with the UK's House of Holland.
For her Australian Autumn Winter '09 ÔBelievers' collection, Walker has embraced the boyfriend and unleashed a collection of beautifully tailored menswear inspired collared shirts, oversized blazers, shorts and pants and well as her signature feminine dresses.
The collection features washed-out blue shirtings, chambrays and denims, sheer and opaque white cotton voiles, white floral burnouts and navy and grey check linen. Larger-than-life chicken graphics on draped dresses and tops are unexpected while other fabric prints include pastel mint and apricot oversized leopard skin and wicker in tan and cream.
Karen Walker is stocked in over 250 stores throughout the world in cities including New York, London, Hong Kong, LA, Sydney and Tokyo. There are also three Karen Walker flagship stores in New Zealand and one flagship store in Taipei.
Visit www.karenwalker.com
