I have to admit it took me a while to really recognise Karen Walker's collections. I only noticed her name probably for the first time when I was working in the Glamour fashion cupboard and they had quite a few of her pieces floating around.
The other day when I was flicking through Heather Marks images on Style.com for a previous post I noticed one of her wearing an adorable Karen Walker ensemble on the runway with a cute girly denim skirt and decided to look through more of her shows.
Needless to say I fell for her designs. She has fun, playful flirty garments that I could imagine seeing in TeenVogue, then more sophisticated classic pieces that would very easily be featured in Vogue. Her designs aren't ridiculous or particularly groundbreaking, but it's all wearable and fun which is something very important and that many budding designers forget about.
We had a talk at my university a few weeks back with Peter Jensen, and he described how some of the CSM students would try and make things with 50 pleats and pockets just to try and be edgy, and that is not what good fashion design is all about. He made a very good point with that I think. Let's face it, if the design world was full of Pugh's and McQueen's, we would all look a bit weird and uncomfortable at the best of times.
Anyway, here is the lovely New Zealand born Karen Walker herself and some of her designs from Spring 2007 to Spring 2010. Her most recent collection is definitely my favourite.
