Designer: Karen Walker
Based: Auckland

Karen Walker is a New Zealand born fashion designer with a reputation for her original, effortless and unpretentious style. The Karen Walker clothing labels are stocked in over 140 stores throughout the world in cities including New York, London, Hong Kong, Los Angeles and Sydney and in over 20 cities throughout Japan. There are also three Karen Walker flagship stores in New Zealand and 1 flagship store in Taipei. Phaidon have included her in their recent book 'Sample' which curates the 100 most influential designers to emerge in the last six years and Taschen have also included her in their recent book 'Fashion Now 2' which highlights the world's most important 160 designers as selected by i-D magazine.Karen was awarded the 2007 Prix de Marie Claire award for best creative talent.
Designer: Karen Walker
Based: Auckland

Karen Walker is a New Zealand born fashion designer with a reputation for her original, effortless and unpretentious style. The Karen Walker clothing labels are stocked in over 140 stores throughout the world in cities including New York, London, Hong Kong, Los Angeles and Sydney and in over 20 cities throughout Japan. There are also three Karen Walker flagship stores in New Zealand and 1 flagship store in Taipei. Phaidon have included her in their recent book 'Sample' which curates the 100 most influential designers to emerge in the last six years and Taschen have also included her in their recent book 'Fashion Now 2' which highlights the world's most important 160 designers as selected by i-D magazine.Karen was awarded the 2007 Prix de Marie Claire award for best creative talent.
Karen's collections are high casual with one foot in tailoring and the other in street wear. The recurring theme is taking extremes and pushing them together - masculine and feminine, tailored and street, luxury and non luxury, dark and super-cute.

Overall the label has a feeling of effortlessness and has been described by the U.K.'s Independent newspaper as being 'The kind of look that provides a means of appearing cool but not trying-too-hard, cute but not saccharine, alternative but not self consciously so. The fact that these clothes appear to be so totally not 'fashion' is what makes them so now".The collections all have the outsider as their inspiration.

Karen Walker's work celebrates the anti-'it girl' - characters like Ally Sheedy's heavy fringed weirdo in 'The Breakfast Club', orphan Annie, the juvenile delinquent prom queen who climbs out the window after curfew to run with the bad crowd, Woody Allen's persistently dissatisfied Annie Hall or an Amelia Earhart-inspired adventuress who, after crash landing in the jungle, turns her back on civilisation in preference of tribal life.

In addition to her main womenswear collections Karen also designs Karen Walker Jewellery, Karen Walker Eyewear, Karen Walker Paints, a selection of paint colours sold through Resene paint stores throughout New Zealand and Australia; and a lifestyle line, Swanndri by Karen Walker, in partnership with iconic New Zealand heritage brand Swanndri.Celebrities such as Bjork, Sienna Miller, Jennifer Lopez, Claire Danes, Cate Blanchett, Liv Tyler, Mandi Moore, Shirley Manson, Kate Hudson, Kelly Osbourne, Claudia Schiffer, Drew Barrymore and Madonna all favour her work with 4 pieces from the 'Dust' collection featuring on Kate Winslet in Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman's legendary 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'.Karen lives and works in New Zealand with her husband Mikhail, their dog and two cats.

Photo by Michael Ng/Air New Zealand Fashion Week 2008

21/09/08