Design + Culture + Craft: Target Serves Up Modern Global Style

Ever dream of packing your bags and traveling the world? This spring, Target’s helping guests celebrate rich global style trends with a new collection inspired by our design team’s travels and a fusion of local and global artistry. Beginning in late April, we’ll create a modern global market in select Target stores and on our site. Guests will discover cross-merchandised vignettes with hundreds of products across our exclusive apparel and accessories, home and beauty brands. Shop the collection here.

“Today people are more culturally connected than ever, which creates a desire for aesthetics from every corner of the world,” says Julie Guggemos, senior vice president, Product Design & Development, Target. “Target’s Product Design & Development team has the unique opportunity to travel the globe, get first-hand inspiration and create authentic products for our guests.”

Celebrating modern and traditional crafting techniques
For our global collection, our design team set out on a trek around the world, making stops in St. Tropez, the Philippines, Bali and Thailand. They drew inspiration from what they saw—techniques like patchwork, embroidery, braiding and weaving, and materials like luxe jacquards, voile, tortoise shell and faux horn.

Supporting crafts from around the world
As part of Target’s celebration of global style, we’ve also partnered with online marketplace Accompany to bring our guests Accompany Us to Target—a limited-edition assortment of products from six different countries. Among them? Ecuadorian beaded bangles, block printed cosmetic bags made in India, and wooden Kuni bowls from Kenya. It’ll be available at 12 of our stores and Target.com, while supplies last.

Our partners at Accompany searched far and wide to find the people whose work would be featured in the assortment. Accompany acts as the modern curator and storyteller, updating the goods just enough to make them relevant for today, while maintaining their cultural authenticity.

“Accompany’s mission is to build income-generating opportunities for local people across the developing world,” says Jason Keehn, founder, Accompany. “Traditional crafts and indigenous methods for creating products are being lost every day, and we aim to support the livelihood and communities of these craftspeople by connecting their goods with a wide consumer base. Through our partnership with Target, we’re able to shine a spotlight on the communities creating these goods and help them continue their traditions, now and in the future.”

Take a look at how some of the products were made:

A commitment to sourcing responsibly
As production kicked off, our team forged new relationships in keeping with our responsible sourcing commitments across the supply chain. We know our guests care about where their products come from and how they’re produced, so we connected Accompany to our partners at Nest—an NGO advocate for global artisans and homeworkers—to ensure the appropriate social compliance programs were in place.

“Staying connected to smaller communities around the world is an important part of Target’s formula, especially in relation to how our products are designed, developed, sourced and made,” says Kelly Caruso, president, Target Sourcing Services. “We’re committed to fostering ongoing, mutually beneficial relationships with our vendors and artisan partners, and this collaboration helps Target deliver on our aspirations to support worker well-being.”

A win-win for all. Check out a few of the products below, and shop the full collection now.