On Monday night’s episode of The Tonight Show, we learned that Harry Potter star Rupert Grint’s two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Wednesday, is a huge Target fan. The British actor revealed to the talk show host that he built his toddler a mini Target playstore, complete with a checkout register stashed with gift cards.
“She is obsessed with Target,” the actor said. “She’d choose that over going to the park or zoo.” He later continued, “Sometimes she doesn’t buy anything, she just wants to kind of browse.”
The two-year-old has spent most of her short life living in Philadelphia as the star had been based there since 2019 filming four seasons of Servant, the M. Night Shyamalan original thriller series for AppleTV+. Now back in England, Grint explained to Fallon how much Wednesday (yes, that is her name) misses the store, and we definitely feel her pain. “She spent most of her time in America, so she’s missing some cultural things,” Grint joked.
It is not a stretch to say that the general retail merchandiser has become a cultural force, establishing itself as the most fashionable of all big box stores. Sightings of celebs like Beyoncé, Jessica Alba, and even Michelle Obama browsing the aisles are not uncommon, and after over two decades focused on high-fashion and high-style collaborations, the big box store has made quality design accessible to all.
The retailer’s first designer collab happened back in the ‘90s with Michael Graves’ architectural firm designing housewares for the merchandiser, including a replica of their famous PoMo kettle, but all with wallet-friendly price points. The exclusive to Target items were a runaway success, and just like that, the store was able to ensconce itself into the zeitgeist. Success in the home goods department continues to this day with designer collaborations like those with Justina Blakeney and countless others.
Target continued the collabs and had its first joint fashion venture with then glam-designer Isaac Mizrahi, known for his over-the-top style in high-fashion circles . “It was a very scary thing,” Mizrahi told The New York Times about the collab. High-low fashion projects had a long history of failures up until then, but the project was a smashing sensation that Target has continued to churn out sold-out collections with the likes of designers like the late Alexander McQueen in the early 2000s and Sergio Hudson last fall.
Target democratized selective design for many Americans so we’d be pining for the store too, if it were to be taken away from us. We totally get you, Wednesday.
