Anna Sui Channels ‘Gossip Girl’ for Target

Every designer needs a muse, as this year's Costume Gala and related Met Museum exhibition "Model as Muse" shows. And for Anna Sui, that inspiration comes from the four female leads on none other than CW cult hit Gossip Girl -- at least for her upcoming capsule collection for Target’s Go International series. “When I was in Asia last year, all the young girls kept asking me about the different locations in New York City where the characters from ‘Gossip Girl’ live,” Sui told Women’s Wear Daily of her fictional muses. Sui’s Target collection (her first for the mega retailer, though not her premiere diffusion line) is slated to hit 250 of Target’s US outposts September 13, where it will line racks until October 17.

On a separate note, WWD’s piece on Sui’s new collaboration also touches on Target’s successes and lack thereof with designer partnerships. “Despite initiatives like Go International, Target has never recaptured the fashion momentum it had when Isaac Mizrahi was doing an exclusive line for the retailer,” WWD says (which isn’t necessarily surprising given the fact that Mizrahi is a maven of making mainstream-applicable clothing; take his recent transformation of Liz Claiborne, for one). Though long-term partnerships with the likes of Mizrahi, Mossimo, and Merona—monikers which all carry more weight when it comes to a wide range of demographics—have reached a broader customer base, Go International remains geared towards a more niche market. “Go International is really for the hard-core dedicated ‘Sex and the City’ type of customer,” Bill Dreher, an analyst for Deutsche Bank, told WWD. In other words, choosing Gossip Girl as her inspiration might have been the smartest move Sui could make.