Cool, Condensed

By Ruth La Ferla
Athena Calderone, shown with her husband Victor, wore a Gap Kids denim jacket at a party in New York. Marc Dimov/PatrickMcMullan.comAthena Calderone, shown with her husband, Victor, wore a Gap Kids denim jacket at a party in New York.

If Athena Calderone has a fashion signature, it’s her tiny jean jacket. “I wear it with almost everything,” said Ms. Calderone, an interior designer. “With black jeans and a shirt by day, and with a dress at night.”

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That she found it at Gap Kids is a bonus. It’s a perfect fit for her slender frame, she said, its shrunken 1990s-style proportions lending it unexpected cachet. Better still, it confers bragging rights. “If people compliment you on the look,” she said, “it implies you’re slim and cool and crafty.”

Ms. Calderone is one in a clan of lithe-framed women buying Gap Kids wares for themselves. They are drawn to offerings like the spangled sweaters and faux-fur-trimmed Fair Isle coats, which they find practical, and often downright covetable.

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy wearing a Stella McCartney for GapKids jacket. Canal PlusCarla Bruni-Sarkozy wearing a Stella McCartney for Gap Kids jacket.
Actress Kristin Chenoweth is one of the matchstick-slender types who finds Gap Kids' clothing better fitting than Gap’s adult-size offerings. Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesKristin Chenoweth is one of the matchstick-slender types who finds Gap Kids’ clothing better fitting than Gap’s adult-size offerings.

Two years ago, the Gap brand raised its cool quotient, signing Stella McCartney to design a capsule collection. Ms. McCartney’s child-size military jacket with braid trim was snapped up by aficionados like Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, who wore it to perform on French television. A forthcoming Gap Kids collaboration with Diane von Furstenberg is likely to attract its own quirky following.

The children’s collection, Sizes 2 to 14 (and up to 18 online), appeals to matchstick-slender types like the actress Kristin Chenoweth, who calls herself a fan, and Jenne Lombardo, a branding consultant. Ms. Lombardo, a mother of three, shops at the chain for her sons, and for herself as well. She said she found the children’s line to fit better, and to be more distinctive, than Gap’s adult-size offerings.

“Besides,” she said, “there’s something really fun about discovering fashion from an unexpected source.”