NEW YORK — There wasn’t a size 2 in sight. The youngest model on the set was 37.
The stage was being readied for a take on chic-yet-approachable fashion, by way of Forth & Towne’s spring-summer 2007 marketing campaign.
The players were Karen Alexander, 40, a fashion classicist who has been modeling since she was 15; India Hicks, 39, who still can be lured from her Harbour Island, Bahamas, home to appropriate her casual sophistication to a select group of brands, and Elaine Irwin Mellencamp, a fresh presence at 37, whose style is eclectic.
The scene at Lux Studio in Chelsea here was one of constant motion, people swirling in and out of dressing areas and sample rooms, churning about an airy lounge. Hicks, taking her turn with photographer Michael Thompson, strolled by in a cotton sateen trenchcoat. Soon after Hicks was at work with Thompson, Mellencamp, wife of rocker John Mellencamp, sashayed across the studio with a terry cloth bathrobe wrapped around her hips and legs. Alexander emerged to exchange a few words with Mellencamp, her best friend.
These are the kinds of women with whom Gap Inc.’s fledgling Forth & Towne brand is trying to forge a bond — those in their mid-30s or older, who have a strong sense of confidence and personal style. Kimberly Grayson, senior vice president of marketing at Forth & Towne, said it’s a group that is “positive and excited about where they are in their lives, but haven’t necessarily found a place at which they’re excited to shop.”
Describing Alexander, Hicks and Mellencamp as “beautiful and inspiring, balancing career and motherhood,” Grayson said of the trio: “These are not size 2 women; these are women who have real bodies. So much of what we do in the marketing community has to come from the real world. Women are being offered more opportunities later in life and they’re taking them.”
Although their professed affection for Forth & Towne could seem akin to cheerleading, Alexander and Hicks sounded sincere in outlining what they favor in the brand. For Alexander, it’s “clothes that are modern and wearable, without being too fashion-y.” For Hicks, it’s “a sophisticated look at an affordable price.”
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The brand also offers Alexander the opportunity to “look age-appropriate,” the model said in an interview after the shoot. “That’s probably a loaded statement because what does age-appropriate mean?” she asked. “But I mean, so it doesn’t look like I’m competing with my [16-year-old] daughter.”
Hicks, daughter of Lady Pamela Mountbatten (and 464th in line to succeed to the British throne), found Forth & Towne’s affordability resonated with her personally. “I’ll wander into a Dior, but at the end of the day, I’m a mall shopper,” she confided.
Forth & Towne fashion in the spring-summer marketing campaign will play to an eclectic sensibility that has so far prevailed among its customers, since the Gap offshoot, now with a presence in six states, opened for business last year with a store in West Nyack, N.Y. As those customers have spent significant time interacting with their shopping partners or others they encounter in the venue, the campaign will feature portraits of the models interacting with each other, as well as straightforward portraits of the group and the individuals.
“We’re channeling vintage chic imagery from Forties, Fifties and Sixties department stores, for a modern woman,” said Michael Kaye, senior creative director at ad agency AR. “We are communicating with her directly, in a way she’d like to be spoken to. She’s a woman who tends to be spoken down to.”
Slated to run from February through mid-June, ads envisioned as clean, warm and inviting will appear in national and local print; mall media such as kiosks and banners, and outdoors, and will be augmented by e-mail and direct mail messages. “The chic revolution continues” is the campaign’s tag line, representing an evolution from the brand’s holiday declaration: “The chic revolution begins.”
Fashion fodder for the shoot in the sample room at Lux ran from a little black jersey dress with a plunging neckline to a pair of indigo jeans to a black patent handbag with chunky hardware, and the cotton sateen trench. The size of the apparel items was 10, a size, Grayson noted, that can be fitted to accommodate the Gen-X models, as can the dozen or so pair of size 9 Forth & Towne shoes, as the models’ feet generally are a size 8, 9 or 10.
Despite her habit of assessing her wardrobe before she starts shopping for her own clothes, Alexander has been finding it hard “to find pieces where I look like me.” What she has enjoyed about her hunt for apparel is shopping with her 16- and nine-year-old daughters and seeing what they’re interested in, and shopping with her best friend, Mellencamp. Of the latter, Alexander, who lives in Pasadena, Calif., said, “It doesn’t happen very often, because she’s in Indiana. But we talk every morning, after we drop our kids off.”
For Hicks, finding clothes she likes has been easier, but the opportunities to do so have been fewer and farther between. “Because I’m leading this sort of weird life in the Bahamas, when I go to the U.S., I go directly to the mall,” Hicks related. “There is so much readily available. In general, I’m very easy to please.”