“Hey, Kerrigan!”
Daryl K designer Daryl Kerrigan is barking out her surname in a low, gruff inflection. She’s trying to demonstrate, in her soft Irish lilt, the tomboy-ish feel of her childhood nickname. “My brothers and their friends would always call me that. ‘Hey, Kerrigan — get over here!'” the Dublin native recalls with a laugh. Now Kerrigan is also doubling as the moniker of her new contemporary collection, set to launch during fashion week on Monday. “It almost embarrassed me to call it that because of my childhood connotations,” she says. “But it does have a boyish feel, and I wanted it to feel young.”
Along with that, Kerrigan is also wonderfully easy on the wallet — wholesale prices top off at $125. Dresses start at $65, with tops at $72 and bottoms at $80. “I’ve always been strongly connected to my customers. I see the young girls who are crazy for the clothes but can’t afford them. I think that’s terrible,” she says. “I’m not a snob about prices.”
The new lineup, however, is far from just a stab at the ever-popular contemporary market, and Kerrigan has no plans to lure new customers with a cheaper, filtered-down version of her main line. A quick glance at the 22-look collection and it’s obvious that it’s nothing like Daryl K or, for that matter, Daryl K-189 & Co-op, which is designed for and sold exclusively to Barneys New York. Kerrigan puts it this way: The Barneys group channels a Twiggy vibe — easy, gamine and feminine — while Daryl K is Faye Dunaway in black leather-and-beret gear.
But the muse for Kerrigan, the designer says, would probably be the imaginary love child of rockers Richard Hell and Debbie Harry. “It has its own identity,” Kerrigan remarks. “It’s like a young teenager just arrived on the scene, one who’s just bustling with energy and ideas.”
That girl, it seems, also has a penchant for the punk-filled Eighties. Hardware, for example, is a major part of the collection, with nickel snaps and studs galore. And unlike the designer’s other labels, Kerrigan indulges heavily in a neon-bright palette — turquoise, red, orange and indigo. “They’re colors that could be seen to clash with each other,” she says, “but it looks really exciting.” Then there are the heavy doses of magenta. “Isn’t pink the new navy blue of India?” she says, jokingly quoting Diana Vreeland.
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To offset these louder elements, the silhouettes are rather simple and unaffected: roomy silk tunics with contrast-color belts (buyers will be able to order whatever color they want), skinny twill pants, comfy fleece shifts. The sole print here is one of birds and barbed wire. “I like it because it’s hard and soft,” Kerrigan says, “and I guess that’s what I’m known for — mixing hard and soft.”
If longtime fans of the designer are struck with a bit of déjà vu, there’s good reason. Kerrigan, she explains, is a nod back to both her old K-189 label, which closed in 2001, and the early stage of the main Daryl K collection. “It harks back to where I was when I started my business [in 1991], when I first really discovered fashion in New York and opened my store on Sixth Street,” she notes. “I’d go out dancing at Palladium, Limelight or something, wearing, like, stretch shiny vinyl turquoise pants or a hand-stamped neon-pink fitted Lycra T. That was the mood.” (To avoid any confusion, the Barneys line revives the old K-189 collection in name only.)
For her new collection, the designer also revived some of her early-day patterns. A black throw with a drawstring neckline and hem, for instance, dates back to 2003. Kerrigan points out another: a simple languid sleeveless jersey top. “Girls come in [to the store, on Bond Street] in that all the time,” she remarks.
And there’s one last detail the designer’s fans will appreciate and find ever-so-nostalgic: The labels inside the new Kerrigan garments — pink-and-gray tags — mirror the very first handwritten ones for Daryl K.