pic courtesy of Vogue.com.au 

Kit Willow and Portmans score first place in the Australian race to emulate the hugely successful trend for designer/high street partnerships. These designer/high street collaborations are flourishing on the high street retail scene in Europe and the USA with some pretty off the wall collaborations such as Comme des Garcons with Top shop and Vivienne Westwood for Nine West. These limited edition collections fly out the door in moments creating hysteria and excitement amongst design fans desperate to grab a slice of designer action at a fraction of the usual tag

Will Kit’s fans need to grab their sleeping bags, crash helmets and food parcels for their sleep over at the local mall come the release in October? I’m not sure.

There’s something a bit hit and miss about this collaboration.

Portmans demographic could perhaps be described as ‘yummy mummy’. Portmans are safe but not too safe, they offer current trends in a mature, restrained and somewhat diluted, palatable way. One of the key differences between this collaboration and that of the European high street/designer partnerships is the price point and the target market. At prices ranging from $169 to $260 it’s not excatly cheap and chic is it? Can it create the kind of mass market hysteria that say a Sass and Bide/Supre collaboration would? They’d probably need a police presence for that one. Does the Portmans customer covet Kit, or even Know who she is? Girls that’d go wild for this stuff are die hard fashion fans, they shop frequently and fervently devouring fashion mags and grabbing runway knockoffs the minute they hit the stores.

The dresses are pretty enough, but Kit makes it clear that the fabrications are not her usual choices.

What do you think, is this an exciting high street development? Do you have any good suggestions for interesting Australian high street/ designer collaborations? I’d back Alice Mc Call for Temt…..