At the beginning of September, H&M released a teaser video of their next collection that featured a mysterious designer. People guessed that the mysterious designer might be Alber Elbaz of Lanvin, Thomas Maier of Bottega Veneta, Vivenne Westwood or other well-known fashion designers. After all these rumours, the mysterious designer in the video was actually the artistic director of Lanvin, Alber Elbaz. H&M is collaborating with Lanvin, one of the oldest French Fashion Houses, to design a collection called “Lanvin for H&M”, which will go on sale on November 23 in around 200 H&M stores worldwide. People are able to have a glimpse of both women and men collection in the H&M website on November 2. This line designed by Alber Elbaz and menswear designer, Lucas Ossendrijver, will include womenswear, menswear, accessories, hats, sunglasses, purses, shoes and even lipstick. For the past few years, H&M has been partnered with various top designers such as Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney and Jimmy Choo to launch their collections. These guest designer collaborations always attract fashion lovers all around the world camp out for days in advance or line up outside the H&M stores early in the morning in order to get their hands on a piece of the collection. In November 2004, large crowds of people showed up to purchase apparel and accessories from the exclusive collection by designer Karl Lagerfeld, which resulted the initial inventories of stores in large cities to be sold out within an hour.
Alber Elbaz, who transformed Lanvin into a fashion powerhouse with his ideas and creativity, said “H&M approached us to collaborate, and see if we could translate the dream we created at Lanvin to a wider audience.” He accepted H&M’s offer to collaborate because he was enticed by the “the idea of H&M going luxury rather than Lanvin going public”. The inspiration for “Lanvin for H&M” is based on the women and men that Lanvin’s artistic director knows and wants to know. According to Alber Elbaz, “Lanvin for H&M” will be “a happy collection for happy people”. This collection will definitely benefit H&M because Lanvin will bring a luxurious French tradition to H&M’s products.
By crossing over with Lanvin, H&M enhances the quality of their products and attracts more consumers to purchase items from their stores. The clothes, accessories and shoes from this collection contain value that will cause consumers especially fashion lovers to purchases the products. The target market of this collection is not limited to young individuals, but also include their fathers and mothers. Men and women from different ages can find clothes that they like from this collection. Two different companies working together can create wonderful fashion surprises for women and men around the world. Since Lanvin for H&M is an exclusive collection, it draws shoppers to line up for hours in front of stores creating excessive demand. With H&M’s objective being “fashion and quality at the best price”, the prices for the clothes, accessories and shoes in the collection are reasonable. Consumers who cannot afford a Lanvin product before are now able to buy one of Lanvin designs through this collection. By limiting the collection only to be sold in 200 H&M stores worldwide, H&M lets consumers to think how valuable and special this collection is, so the anticipation of consumers and the desire to purchase the products increase. To promote “Lanvin for H&M”, H&M released videos that feature Alber Elbaz who shares his thoughts, inspiration, concepts and hopes on the collaboration of Lanvin and H&M. These videos allow the public to learn more about the collection and the designer brand, Lanvin.
In my opinion, H&M is smart to invite different influential designers as their guest designer because the collaborations add an innovative style to the clothes, accessories and shoes normally sold in H&M stores. Through H&M’s global network, more people will know the label, Lanvin. H&M uses the collaboration to increase their sales, reach out to more consumers who might usually not shop at H&M and fulfill the desire of consumers who would like to own designer brand products. I think the “Lanvin from H&M” collection makes H&M products more high-end. H&M and Lanvin’s collaboration will be a very successful marketing strategy in the competitive fashion world. I can’t wait to see which famous fashion designer H&M will work with next.
