This is a kind of collaboration we all been waiting for!
Gap Inc. revealed that it has signed a deal with the British designer to create one-off collections for Gapkids and babyGap. The lines will launch late this year and will be carried in select GapKids and babyGap stores in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France, Ireland and Japan, as well as online in the U.S.
In November, in collaboration with Gap Kids and Baby Gap, McCartney is unveiling a one-time-only stash of children’s clothes, a product category grown-up clients of the ultracool designer have been demanding for years. Launching in the UK, France, Japan, the U.S. and Canada, the line includes everything from supersoft cashmere blankets for newborns to Fair Isle sweaters, brushed cotton blazers with silk lapels, and those wool military jackets, which are intricately embroidered with gold thread. In addition to the wallet-friendly price points (from $14 for wool tights to $128 for jackets), many of the looks are versatile enough to be worn by either girls or boys, a boon for parents with big broods.
A mother of three children under the age of five (two boys, Miller and Beckett, and a girl, Bailey), McCartney says opting to work on her first full-blown kids’ collection with a stylish yet affordable retail partner was a natural move. As a mom, she says, she was frustrated by the gulf between the extremes of the children’s clothes spectrum. “I find there’s nothing between the two worlds—it’s kind of cheap or expensive, and they look like that,” she explains. “Some expensive labels are too conservative and twee, and the cheaper stuff is a little less classy and tasteful.”
Of course, McCartney knows it’s not only Mom and Pop steering the sartorial ship. “I’m quite aware that after the age of four and a half, kids actually don’t want to wear what their parents want to put on them anymore,” she says, raising a knowing eyebrow. So to avoid pitched battles with her own line, McCartney sought design input from insiders. Specifically, she commissioned four-year-old Miller and her colleagues’ daughters to draw the monsters that adorn the days-of-the-week underwear.
McCartney says she was determined to book miniature civilians rather than polished child models for the campaign. “Perfect little kids are not really very me,” she says. “I wanted to have a bit of realness.” And she has a similarly no-nonsense approach to the collection. “When you’re talking about this kind of accessibility and children,” she says, “it’s really important that you feel comfortable throwing the lot of it in the washing machine and not being too precious with it.”
To that end, while there are tulle tutus and a silk dress embroidered with tiny flowers, there are also basics, including smart navy peacoats, organic cotton T-shirts and high-top sneakers. “Nothing is really matching, which is very much what I do,” she notes. “And a lot of the designs just get better with age.” Still, McCartney has worked in plenty of the luxe elements that have won her own line loyal fans. Some pieces have even been shrunk down from her past women’s collections, such as a sweaterdress knit with an intarsia leopard design and a pretty plum-colored wool princess coat with a pleated skirt.
Though she has designed one pricey girls’ dress—a one-off for spring 2009 that was part of a matching mom and daughter set—McCartney has no immediate plans to include kids’ clothes in her signature line. And she admits that awaiting the verdict of discerning parents on the Gap collection is “kind of nerve- racking,” especially after the runaway success of her first guest High Street collaboration with H&M, in 2005, for which fans stood in line for hours. “You don’t know how it’s going to go down,” she says. “But I personally prefer shopping for my kids’ clothes to shop-ping for my own. I just get more enjoyment out of it.”
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