Thursday, April 15, 2010

Eugenia Kim Hats at Target beginning April 18


Eugenia Kim will begin selling her hats at Target beginning on April 18. As much as I like to see milliners become as successful as possible, I sort of have mixed feelings about being able to buy her hats at stores nationwide. I bought my floppy Eugenia Kim sun hat at P45 a number of years ago. It's very unique, which I can't say about what will be sold at Target. Eugenia's written a book Saturday Night Hat: Quick, Easy Hatmaking for the Downtown Girl, so the hats at Target seems like a natural segue, perhaps part of a business plan to become a brand like Marc Jacobs or Kenneth Cole. What would you do if Target approached you to sell your products at their stores? Would you gleefully sign the contract or tell 'em to take a hike? For those of you who sew and have the greatest affinity for Liberty Fabrics, what do you think about the Liberty-related products at Target? Good, bad or just plain cheap?

2 comments:

Rose said...

There's an article in April 15 2010 issue of the Wall Street Journal about Zac Posen (it's available on w/o a subscription). It discusses in part why he is working with Target. The article mentions that because of the economy, there are more high end designers who are willing to work with Target, and that "Target—with its vast marketing muscle and cheap veins of production—is teaching one haute designer after another how to make a go of a mass brand." Posen and his mother (who is his business manager) look at the Target collection as a marketing opportunity.

Let's not fool ourselves: a $30 dress from Target will not be the same (in materials or in detailed workmanship) as $300 dress from the couture/boutique collection, but it allow the mass market consumer to buy piece of the couture brand, in the same way that Chanel sell's perfume.

Rose in SV

Run Lori Run said...

I love Liberty fabric but wasn't too impressed with the Target stuff. The rain boots were kind of cute tho.