Rain Maker

French brand K-Way leads the way with packable rainwear.

As the story goes, it was a rainy day in Paris, 1965, when K-Way founder Leon-Claude Duhamel sat near the Eiffel Tower and watched passersby duck for cover beneath bags, newspapers and anything else they could get their hands on to stay dry. Lightning didn’t strike Duhamel, but an idea did: packable, lightweight rain jackets. Flash forward to 2013 and K-Way’s jackets in a pouch are stretching their reach across the Atlantic with sporty and colorful styles for men, women and children size 12 months to 14 years.
Since launching in the U.S. in 2004, the kids’ collection has become the company’s main source of business stateside—boosted by prime real estate in high profile retailers like Crewcuts, says K-Way Brand Manager Matt Feigin. “We started with one design and now design 15 to 20 styles for J.Crew a season,” he says of the brand’s biggest account. In fact, K-Way is the retailer’s largest third party vendor.

That placement in Crewcuts, along with more than 600 children’s boutique accounts and a flagship store in New York City (Feigin says more retail plans are in the works), has cemented K-Way as a go-to source for weatherproof apparel. “Lightweight, packable and water-resistant are iconic traits of the brand,” Feigin reports, as well as the rainbow zipper featured throughout the range. A new reversible nylon down jacket is a bestseller for Fall ’13, but a military-inspired jacket is gaining traction, too, he notes. He also sees retailers embracing pops of florescent orange and yellow when paired with deep blues and steel gray. For girls, orange/pink and lavender/dark purple colorways are hits.

The fall line, which retails from $45 to $175, also includes brand-new reversible vests, waterproof pants, coordinating scarves and packable bags that relate back to the men’s and women’s collections. Although the brand does most of its business in bigger kids’ sizes, Feigin says, “As a European brand, we see a lot of demand for mommy-and-me and daddy-and-me looks, and that theme is carried throughout the line.” Some style elements are lost in translation, he admits. To suit American consumers’ tastes, Feigin says fits need to be reworked and elastics must be removed from wristbands. “It’s a lot easier to cross over adult styles, but kids are a different breed,” he adds. —A.V.