NEW YORK — Patricia Field, the maven of urban chic, has joined forces with Damon Dash to create a limited-edition collection for Rocawear, appropriately titled “Patricia Field for The House of Rocawear.”
“Pat is a cool chick, and we have a mutual respect for each other,” Dash said last week from his 38th-floor corner office at 1411 Broadway here. “Cool recognizes cool, and I’m supportive of anyone who supports me.”
The collection will launch at retail in the fall and will conclude with a holiday line. It boasts a rock star-meets-motor club vibe with appropriate measures of glam and sexiness thrown into the mix. In other words, vintage Patricia Field.
“We didn’t choose Pat for her name,” Dash said from behind his desk, decorated with interlocking silver Ds on the frame, a stunning view of the Chrysler Building behind him. “We chose her for her sense of style. But it doesn’t hurt that people know who she is.”
The collection consists of fitted, laced-up skirts and pants; dresses with plunging necklines, and tailored fleece motorcycle pants with matching motorcycle and bomber jackets. The denim collection features paint-splattered and rubber-printed designs, and knit separates come in bold, Eighties-inspired colors such as purple, hot pink, yellow and blue over a heather and caviar-black base.
There are roughly 25 designs in the line, which wholesales in the range of $44 to $58, a price point about 15 to 20 percent higher than the existing Rocawear junior collection. Christopher Laurita, president and chief executive officer of Signature Apparel Group, the company that holds Rocawear’s junior apparel license, orchestrated the deal with Field.
“We’re expecting the wholesale volume for this collection to reach $5 million, at a minimum” said Laurita. The collection will be available at Field’s SoHo boutique, Hotel Venus; Federated stores nationwide, and urban chain stores such as D.e.m.o. and Up Against the Wall.
Initially, Laurita said, Dash and Field had a summer collection in mind, but the project didn’t come together in time.
“I’m actually really happy we decided to push it back to fall and holiday because the product is now more effective,” said Laurita. “You can do so much more with outerwear and denim.”
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Fortunately, Field was already familiar with the Rocawear junior collection. “Little by little, Damon and I started to work together in different ways,” said Field, seated in a showroom at the Rocawear offices and dressed in a tan Rocawear jumpsuit, with her fire red curls framing her face. Field said she frequently uses clothes from the Rocawear women’s collection when styling Faith Ford and Kelly Ripa on the television show “Hope & Faith.”
“I like working with people who I feel I’m on the same wavelength with. I like young, affordable, sexy clothes, and I think Rocawear embodies all those elements. I feel like they needed my element, which is sexy girlie, and they wanted to introduce something in my image.”
“If I was a girl, I’d do it up like Pat,” Dash said, commenting on Field’s style, as he paced around his beige office, wondering why there was no music filling the air. He occasionally glanced at the digital clock hanging next to his desk that listed the exact times in New York, Los Angeles and London.
“The thing is, I’m not a designer in that sense. I’m a retailer and merchandiser,” said Field. “I needed to know where Rocawear’s capability was, what they were set up to do and what their business was like so that I could go on without going in the opposite direction. And we went from there.”
The collection, Field said, is worn by women who are dressing according to style, not age. “Because the clothes are sexy, we have a bigger base with a younger audience who’s out there going to clubs — not going home to watch TV,” she said.
Both Dash and Field cited Rachel Roy, design director for Rocawear’s women’s and children’s line and head designer for the Rachel Roy collection launched late last year, as the driving force in the collaboration. She also recently married Dash.
“I had a bunch of designers down on a wish list to do a guest-celebrity injection, but at the end of the day, I didn’t feel right about choosing someone that wasn’t a friend,” said Roy. “Since Pat was on my list, I thought, ‘How could we not use Pat?’”
Roy said the celebrity injection trend will continue with Rocawear, though she declined to name future candidates. “I have a wish list, but neither Damon nor I have approached anyone,” she said. The celebrity injection, she said, is a necessary part of keeping the Rocawear brand fresh.
Roy said Field’s ease at mixing high- and low-end merchandise is crucial to understanding Rocawear. “I base the Rocawear junior collection off that philosophy,” Roy said.
The flexibility of her schedule on “Hope & Faith,” Field acknowledged, has allowed her to work on other projects, such as the Rocawear collaboration.
“‘Hope & Faith’ is a comedy that requires just a fragment of my time, so it allows me to do so many more things. The last thing I would want is to have done something similar to ‘Sex and the City,’ ” she said. “I did it. Now, I want to do something else. I don’t want to repeat myself.”
Field said she’s been keeping busy working on a number of projects for DKNY, such as its ad campaign and fashion presentation. Field also designed the holiday windows for H&M late last year and is currently working on a project for Revlon.
Aside from the Patricia Field for The House of Rocawear collection, Roy said an obvious change in the direction of the Rocawear junior collection will be apparent in the upcoming seasons.
“We’re starting to revamp the entire junior collection,” said Roy. “It’ll be different. Customers want sexier stuff. They want more fashion-forward items, more than just sweats and denim. They want classy sexy, not video sexy. It’s for girls who aren’t trying too hard. Nothing looks forced or hard to get into.”
April magazines will feature Rocawear’s new print advertising campaign, Roc for Life, a 10-page spread shot by Mario Testino and featuring A-listers such as Kevin Bacon, Cam’ron, Karolina Kurkova, Naomi Campbell, Dash and Roy.
Currently, there are no specific ads planned for the Patricia Field for The House of Rocawear, though Roy said the decision to do ads for that collection might change.