Homestead Launching Collier Campbell
By Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 4/4/2005
New York —The Collier Campbell name is headed back to retail. Homestead will launch the brand during the New York Home Textiles Market later this week, making it one of six branded concepts being featured at its 230 Fifth Ave. showroom.
The label by British textiles designing sisters Susan Collier and Sarah Campbell had a brief run as a licensed line at W-C Designs in 2001, and in the 1990s did a department store-targeted licensed program through WestPoint Stevens.
This time, the brand “is well on its way to launching (as an exclusive) at a major U.S. retailer,” said David Greenstein, founder of Homestead and CEO of parent company London Fog.
To heighten the label's profile in the multi-media age, London Fog's Hot House branding group division will shoot a pilot Collier and Campbell program that the company will pitch to home-oriented cable stations.
“The main concept is bringing garden into the house,” Greenstein said. “As the garden transforms through the seasons, the house also transforms.”
Leveraging another sister division at London Fog, Homestead will launch Pacific Trail Home, an extension of the outerwear brand. The line will debut with five beds embodying the Pacific Northwest lifestyle and includes flannel sheets, duvets and blankets. The program will be ready for fall retail programs, Greenstein said.
“It's a very cedar wood, haberdashery look. There's very little of that out there as a brand,” he said.
Also new this market is The Windsor Hotel collection, tapping the current trend of upmarket hotel luxury looks. The program's core will be high-count dobby and jacquard sheets. Counts will go up to 400 threads, single ply.
Homestead's Toscana branded line by Nancy Koltes, which debuts at a major department store later this year, will show two new concepts this market.
New looks will also be shown in the Stacy Haase sub-brand Sasha and Tharp, an urban line with a feminine sensibility.
Homestead also will be showing Little Tykes. The company has been working with brand owner Newell Rubbermaid on cross-promotional concepts such as providing a toy with purchase. The bedding features scenes that can incorporate the toy for play.
In addition to the six brands Homestead is showing this week, there are already seven more in the pipeline for fall market week, Greenstein said. While the division continues to handle a lot of private label work, it is aggressively pursuing the trend of limited-run fashion programs.
“We're like this factory for branding. None of these things is meant to last forever — just for the time that they're relevant and the trend is right,” he said.
