Karen Walker is a New Zealand born fashion designer with a reputation for her original, effortless and unpretentious style.

Karen Walker  is stocked in over 250  stores throughout the world in cities including New York, London,  Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Sydney and  Tokyo. There are also three Karen Walker flagship stores in New Zealand and 1 flag ship  store in Taipei.

Walker shows her collections each season as part of  New York Fashion Week. She also  has permanent  showrooms in London, New York, Tokyo and Sydney. 

Since 2002 Karen has been working closely with stylist Heathermary Jackson on all her collections.

Karen Walker  receives fantastic  editorial coverage including regular pages in American and English magazines such as  i-D, Vogue,  Teen Vogue, Elle,  W and Nylon.

Phaidon have included her in their recent book ‘Sample’ which curates the 100 most influential designers to emerge in the last 6 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 reoccurring 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,  an Amelia Earhart inspired adventuress who,  after crash landing in the jungle, turns her back on civilisation in preference of tribal life  or 1930s comic book superheroines leading double lives. 

In addition to her main womenswear collections Karen also designs Karen Walker Jewellery selling in exclusive boutiques and department stores  in New Zealand, Australia, Japan and the United States;  Karen Walker Eyewear sold through exclusive boutiques, eyewear stores and department  stores in Australia, Japan, the U.K., U.S.A. and New Zealand and  Karen Walker Paints, a selection of paint colours sold through Resene paint stores throughout New Zealand and Australia.

Recent collaborative ventures include pop up store in New York’s East Village concept store The Den,  a makeup project with Boots 17 in the U.K. and a T-shirt collaboration with the U.K.’s  hippest poet / fashion designer House of Holland.

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 in New Zealand with her husband Mikhail, her daughter Valentina and   their dog and two cats.

>URL
http://www.karenwalker.com/
http://www.karenwalkereyewear.com/
http://www.karenwalkerjewellery.com/