MUMBAI: According to Women’s Wear Daily, Beyoncé Knowles has formed a 50-50 joint venture company, Parkwood Topshop Athletic Ltd. with London-based Topshop. The venture is aimed at producing an athletic streetwear brand, and it could launch in stores and online in fall 2015 at the earliest.
“This not a collaboration. This is about building a brand and building a business — a separate, proper business, with separate overhead and a separate office,” Topshop owner Sir Philip Green told WWD in an interview Sunday.
When asked how the deal came to be, Topshop owner Sir Philip Green earlier said, “Basically, when she was in London in February we arranged to get together. We started talking generally, about doing something together. We have been looking at the athletic sector for a while. It is something we need to be in. Based on what she does, how she works out, the conversation got into that category. We started getting into proper conversation in May or June, as to how it would work. It took six or eight weeks to put a deal together. On Friday, Beyoncé came to our office for the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle.”
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Apart from Beyoncé, Topshop currently has no celebrity tie-ins, though it has recently collaborated with Kate Moss on collections as one-offs; the last one being around last Easter, which sold for about a month. Beyoncé’s existing product range under her name extends from a trio of fragrances, to temporary tattoos, and juniors, dresses, denim and hip-hop inspired clothing from her House of Dereon fashion business, which was formed about a decade ago by Beyoncé and her mother/stylist Tina Knowles.
There are still plenty of pieces that need to be put in place at the new venture, including coming up with a name for the collection, the manufacturing logistics, forming a team and establishing an office, which Green said would likely be in New York.
The Topshop-Beyoncé collection will encompass clothing, footwear and accessories across dance, fitness and sports categories. It will have technical performance characteristics as well as an athleisure side, targeting women who go to yoga or the health club, as well as those who just want to look as if they do.
Asked if he ever saw Beyoncé work out, Green said, “No, but I went to her concert in Paris the other week. She’s a great dancer, one of the most hard-working and talented people in the world, who spends many hours of her life dancing, rehearsing and training. This is a unique opportunity to develop this category.” He cited the possibility of Beyoncé creating some workout videos for Topshop. “Maybe she would also give me some training — you never know.”
The deal is expected to be unveiled by Topshop in London on 27 December.
