customer and purpose
for our kid, we know summertime is this long-awaited momentous time where they can be free from the monotony of school and homework. Cue pool time, summer camps, riding bikes, backyard BBQs, ice cream and playing outside until the streetlights come on!
for our parent, they are seeking easy, cool and comfortable clothing that their kid can throw on and off quickly for all of the summer activities. It’s all about activewear, shorts, swim and all the tees!
for summer 2023, we envisioned outfitting our kid for every moment of their summer break. we wanted it to be comfy, versatile, but yet on-trend. We divided the season into 3 themes that focus on doing just that: fashion, swim/resort, and active.
CREDITS:
with every season, it takes an amazing team to make the vision come alive:
GVP of Design, abercrombie kids – sarah schwartz
senior design director, abercombie boys – roma king
concept and art direction, abercrombie kids – becca scono
social media and website work – a&f marketing, stylists and web team
[material shown here is property of abercrombie and fitch and is not for use or reference outside of showcasing my previous work and abilities during my time at abercrombie kids.]
our concept team equipped us with relevant macro trends that are woven throughout the themes, key items, outfits and assortment. the heavy hitters we’re passionate about are licensing, sports jerseys, pull on shorts and matchbacks.
additionally, our concept team presented a page of the most important trend colors for the season, seen utilized in theme color palettes below.
—THEME NO. 1
TAKE A BREAK
— CUSTOMER FACING CAMPAIGN
THE COOL STUFF// FASHION
— SET DATE
MARCH WK 5 2023
‘take a break’ was our intro to summer 2023 and where we envisioned a drop of ‘fashion’ for our kid. the timeframe is near easter and graduation and signals a need for cool and comfy dress up and/or fashion items. think collared shirts and clean shorts, trendy licensing tees and denim shorts. i loved getting behind the trend of matching shirt + shorts sets, camp collar linen shirts, light weight sweater polos, nylon shorts and sports licensed tees. the key is translating adult trends into wearable and easy versions for our kid.
—THEME NO. 2
SUMMER CREW
— CUSTOMER FACING CAMPAIGN
SWIM // RESORT FOCUS
— SET DATE
MAY WK 1 2023
our second theme focused on swim and resort-wear. one of the ‘uniforms’ of the summer for our kid is swim shorts and a top, usually a tee. swim is a big deal; we start designing it very early in spring, create a massive swim shop, and this year, we introduced an incredible new swim fabric in addition to our ‘pool to play’ nylon fabric. to go with the swim assortment, i made sure we gave our kid easy tops that nod to the trends such as destination graphic tees, summer-centric licensing and lightweight resort shirts.
—THEME NO. 3
GOING, GONE
— CUSTOMER FACING CAMPAIGN
READY FOR PLAY ACTIVE
— SET DATE
MAY WK 1 2023
our last theme focused on the most dominant and important type of clothing in their wardrobe- active. we know they LIVE in active during the summer. think comfy enough to lounge around and play video games in, but cool and lightweight to ride their bikes to their friends' house in the blazing sun. there are lots of players and go-to brands in the active market, but we pushed forth to design an assortment with aged-up branding and graphics, a trendy sports- angle with bloke-core jerseys and mesh fabrications, and mix-and-match elevated essentials.
