ON THE RUN

This year Karen Walker celebrates the coming-of-age of the hardest-working teenager in the game — the iconic Runaway Girl. In the process she’s putting a typically fresh spin on an old-school tradition

Karen Walker’s Runaway Girl

It’s a busy old month for Karen Walker — although you imagine most months are pretty busy for our most internationally recognised designer. In her central Auckland HQ she’s calmly overseeing a study in (extremely) organised chaos, with her pre-spring 2018 collection being shot in the showroom downstairs and seasons well beyond that being dreamt up and drawn up above. She’s also getting ready for a new addition to the family, a puppy. “It’s a labradoodle,” says Walker with a slight roll of the eye. “That probably seems a bit predictable actually, but they’re good dogs!”

To top it off she and her team have been organising a very special birthday. This year marks the sweet 16th of Runaway Girl — a little drawing that has almost come to life, capturing both the spirit of the Karen Walker brand and imaginations around the world.

In an industry prone to hyperbole and selfaggrandisement, the word “iconic” rolls off tongues and fingertips far too freely at times. But if there’s an industry player that’s earned a straight-faced right to the “i” word, it has to be Runaway Girl. Her boot-wearing, bindlecarrying and bouncy-haired silhouette is an icon in the literal sense, and almost instantly recognisable to anyone with even a passing interest in fashion.

Created in 2001 by Karen Walker creative director (and Walker’s husband) Mikhail Gherman, Runaway Girl had a particularly auspicious debut — appearing as a print in Walker’s first-ever showing at London Fashion Week.

“The collection itself was called Runaway and was designed around this fantasy of a girl sort of running off to the Midwest — it was a little bit Badlands, a little bit