In the midst of her duties on her father’s campaign trail, Ivanka Trump held an editor breakfast on Tuesday in New York City to show her latest offering for holiday ’16. And although no one whispered his name, this was Donald Trump’s turf.
“The very nice landlord let us use this space today,” demurred Ivanka of the setting, the Jean Georges restaurant within the Trump Hotel at Columbus Circle.
The collection — which now spans footwear, apparel and accessories — showed a progression for the entrepreneur. From a shoe standpoint, Trump ticked all the trend boxes (flat mules, ankle-wrap sandals, round-toe pumps and block heels) without being overtly referential. It was a subtle but smart move for the business woman. Indeed, news broke today that Italian luxury shoe label Aquazzura was suing her and her shoe label partners M.B. Fisher LLC and Marc Fisher Footwear for copying designs.
“The brand started with shoes, and that’s a category that incredibly important to me,” Trump shared with Footwear News at the breakfast. “It’s an area where we continue to grow.”
Collection standouts includes a perforated kitten-heel bootie in metallic, flat pointed and tasselled slippers and lucite-heeled crisscross sandals.
“We have updated styles, new heel heights and we’re doing a lot with flats now. We’re also using a more modern chunkier heel to bring some more fashion into our classic styles,” said Trump.
But her most clever concept for the brand, which is geared toward what Trump dubs “millennial working women,” applied to just her handbags: crowdsourcing. Work totes and pocketbooks were designed with direct feedback from Trump’s network of 4 million social media followers. Continuing the tech-savvy theme, many of the styles had built-in charging capability.
“Now we are several seasons in, and we’ve found a nice rhythm to what we do,” she said. “There’s more breadth.”
Click through to see more from the event and collection.
