What’s That Jacket, Margiela?! No, Kanye, it’s another H&M collaboration! This time the Swedish power house of fast fashion has roped in Maison Martin Margiela to follow in the footsteps of, well, pretty much everyone in luxury fashion. After rumours circulated on twitter earlier this week, it was on Tuesday that the Paris-based Belgian label confirmed its collaborative effort will proceed with a Fall capsule collection to be launched on 15th November this year.
Now, I must admit I have never in fact bought in to any of H&M’s collaborations, and especially scorned Donatella Versace’s offerings last year after she previously announced she would never ‘do’ a High Street diffusion line. It is also rumoured she hadn’t seen any of the H&M X Versace line until the unveiling, but I can’t prove that, unfortunately. Despite this, these collaborations never fail to sell out, and just like the X Factor, it will continue until it dies a death if it is still making more money than its losing. The issue I have, though, is the clever hype and hysteria whipped up by these infamous label’s PRs and marketing teams in order to unconsciously make you believe you MUST stand in line, with a timed wrist band, to buy in to a watered down version of a label you probably aren’t even that hung up on in the first place. And one month down the line, I guarantee you wont see no one wearing that dress you spent hours queuing for in the rain; silver chain-mail Versace H&M dress anyone? Maybe pop it on ebay like everyone else.
The peculiar thing with the Margiela collaboration though, is that people don’t really seem to know how to take it. The label is so avant-garde and, lets face it, for want of a better word, ‘weird’, that there is no way it will deliver your bog standard Lanvin tulle dresses and pretty Marni Skirts. Many of H&M’s younger shoppers (I’m talking the teeny shoppers here) probably aren’t even aware of Maison Martin Margiela. Apart from certain Kanye song lyric references, actually. But maybe this is why H&M have cemented this collection. To move in a new direction? I suppose we will just have to wait until November 15th to see.
