Avril Lavigne Launches Abbey Dawn Clothing Line

It’s not only Victoria Beckham that has successfully crossed from music to fashion, as faux-punker Avril Lavigne also hopes to do the same, with her first line being just a tentative step into that direction. Lavigne launched the Abbey Dawn collection at the New York Fashion Week and, as it’s nothing short of a copy of all of her looks in recent months, it was welcomed with mixed reactions.

Named after the nickname Avril had as a teen, the collection is like a spot of color, with bright pinks and neon colors predominating on all items. There are, of course, also elements of punk that Avril is so fond of, from mock school uniforms to leather belts and bracelets with spikes, hats, snickers and colorful, knee-long socks. In short, just like the singer herself also said, the collection is directly inspired from her look, which makes it so that fans will probably make it fly off the shelves when it becomes available.

“[There’s a] lot of hot pinks and blacks and stars and purple and zebra. Basically, everything I wear. I have a very particular style. I want it to be available to a lot of girls, and I want it to be affordable. What’s really important to me is that everything fits well and is well-made, so I try everything on and approve it all. The hoodies are slimming. It's not a thick, bulky material.” Avril said at the launch, stressing that the collection was also feminine and not just cool and youthful.

However, reactions to Abbey Dawn have not been all positive, with BlackBook dubbing it “Abbey Yawn” and saying it was nothing short of “Avril’s reflection on celebrity narcissism.” It’s not so much that the collection is bad, the review says, but it’s not good either, in the sense that it’s neither original nor surprising in any way. Basically, Avril did precisely what every other singer slash wannabe designer out there does: took somebody else’s work and passed it for her own.

“At the runway show, the models were all groomed after Lavigne, from their flat-ironed ‘dos to their flimsy gaits. None of that helped when they showed off such garb as ‘Crossbones tee with pink/black suspenders & Living Doll shorty-shorts’ or the ‘Doodle Jean.’ But as with her music, it makes sense that Lavigne would stamp her name on the hard work of people who already created and propagated a sub-culture whose commodity lied in appropriation. And even if the clothes kind of sucked, there was something bittersweet and reassuring about seeing Lavigne sashay down the runway upon the show’s conclusion in a tutu and promptly disappear before anyone, unaware of her new blonde ‘do, could remark, ‘Was that Heidi Montag?’” BlackBook says in the scathing review of Avril’s collection.