Hey, shoppers: Did you see the pink velveteen cargo pants at Old Navy? David Fox and his team dreamed those up. How about the fleece jacket with a camouflage insert? Yep, Fox and company did that too.
Fox, 36, heads the kids’ design department at Old Navy. He oversees the creation of hundreds of items for kids 5 to 16.
Q. How do you get all this done?
A. In kids’, I have almost 30 people. Everybody has a specialty. There’s a designer that just does jeans. There’s a designer that just does outerwear. Others that just do boys’ skate, like skater jeans.
Q. How do you get your ideas?
A. We shop. We shop all over the world. We get to go to Tokyo, to London, to Paris, to Los Angeles. And since we live in New York, which is a fashion capital, we shop New York.
I walk down the street and look at what everyone is wearing in the different cities. I would stop the person and ask the person if I could take a picture. Or I would draw it. Or if it was something in a store, I would buy it. I usually buy it.
We look at mostly teens for inspiration … or things we look up to in music or in movies or in other [fashion] labels.
Q. How does an item go from being a picture in your mind to reality?
A. They’re all drawn by hand. We call them flat sketches, so we are actually looking at a black-and-white sketch, just like an architect would do of a building.
It goes into pattern-making, then we pick fabric and trim, and we put together a package … and then it gets sent off to a factory. … A sample is made and it gets sent back. It’s a long process. It takes about nine months from when we first have the idea till when it hits the store.
Q. What’s popular now?
A. For kids, surf denim. This means skateboard jeans for boys. They’re baggy, with great labels, dark washes. And for girls, miniskirts. You know what’s a big hit–fleece.
Q. How do you deal with the problem of kids wanting one thing and parents another?
A. We are a family company, so it has to work for everybody. We call it “the compromise.” … It’s pretty much looking at where the cutoff is for when Mom buys your clothes and when you buy your own, which is 11, 12, 13. Thirteen really. … You might not be able to show your bellybutton, but you still can look cool.
Q. Do you ever design a dud?
A. We thought lime green was going to be really a cool color, and when we got the samples … we were wrong.
