Candie's Women's Fashion Brand

Candie's is a clothing brand started in 1978. It was originally a Charles Cole line of shoes from El Greco Inc. - a shoe label first, which explains the name recognition Candie's carried in footwear long before it dressed anyone head to toe. The brand's positioning is plain: juniors, ages 18 to 34, with a secondary audience of girls ages 7 to 16. This page treats the brand the way that positioning asks: as product - fit, fabric and value in junior fashion - described in straightforward buying terms.

The ownership trail the profile recorded is a tour of American brand management. In 1986, the Pentland Group acquired El Greco. Pentland sold Candie's to Charles Cole's son Neil in 1991. Candie's Inc. acquired the Candie's brand in 1993. And the Candie's brand was purchased by Iconix Brand Group - the company whose Apparel Search profile is linked from this page - which turned Candie's into a licensing-led label rather than a single maker's line.

The Kohl's Era and the Creative Director

Since 2005, Kohl's Department Stores has had exclusive rights to the Candie's brand in all departments except shoes. That single sentence explains where most shoppers have actually met Candie's for two decades: on the junior floor at Kohl's, across clothing and accessories, while the shoe business the brand began with stayed outside the exclusivity. A department-store exclusive at junior price points is a volume business - trend pieces, refreshed often, priced for the 18-to-34 customer the positioning names.

In 2016, the brand introduced Sarah Hyland as its first ever Creative Director. In addition to starring in each campaign, she would be influencing the development and design of each new collection. A celebrity creative director who both fronts the campaigns and touches the product is the licensing era in one move: the brand's face and its design input arriving in the same person, aimed squarely at the junior customer the line has served since 1978.

Shopping Candie's Well

Shop Candie's as junior fashion and it rewards you; shop it expecting designer construction and it will not. Junior sizing runs smaller and straighter than misses sizing, so try two sizes and judge fit seated as well as standing, especially in dresses and denim. At these price points the smart checks are the basics: seams that lie flat, zips that run cleanly, prints that match at the side seams, and fabrics with enough body to survive the wash cycle a young wardrobe actually gets.

Care is where junior pieces earn their keep: wash brights inside out and cool to hold colour, close fastenings before laundering, and dry knits flat when the label allows. Because the Kohl's range refreshes constantly, the cost-per-wear winners are the versatile pieces - the dress that works for three occasions, the shoes (the brand's founding category) that go with everything - rather than the single-event trend buy. That is the honest promise of Candie's since Charles Cole's shoe line of 1978: fashionable, accessible, and aimed at young women dressing on a real budget.

Photos