I love powerful people that treat everyone with kindness and wealthy people that look like bums. I suppose one can say I enjoy surprises. Especially the surprise of Margareta van den Bosch, the woman behind H&M’s collaborations with high-end designers. Looking like Ozzy Osborne dressed as a schoolmarm, this ridiculous looking woman can be held partly responsible for this fast fashion mega brand growing by leaps (profits up 14% from last year).
Van den Bosch has been the woman bringing in names like Karl Lagerfeld, Comme des Garçons, Stella McCartney, Roberto Cavalli and Viktor & Rolf to design for H&M. Obviously, alliances between designers and the high street are not new but,
until Lagerfeld, they had not been involved with such internationally
renowned names.
What I find most interesting is that these collaborations bring very little profit if any. “The Viktor & Rolf wedding dress [sold in the UK] cost a lot more to produce than we
charged for it,” says Van den Bosch, “but we like the rumors around
these collections. They create a sense of excitement about shopping.” Which then leads to tornadoes of customers snatching up everything they can. (Sadly this includes me – I often skip waiting in the absurd dressing room line to try anything on and just buy everything that catches my eye.)
H&M’s current collaboration is truly going to break the store walls with all the consumer’s anticipation. Jimmy Choo, ” a label famous in every country with access to episodes of Sex and the City,” joining H&M’s ranks is truly worthy of the frenzied attention considering the similarity between the real thing and the H&M goodie. This marriage also marks Choo’s foray into clothing.
I can only assume people will be fainting from excitement during their restricted ten-minute shopping slot on November 14th, the day Jimmy Choo premieres in H&M across 19 stores in UK and Ireland. I’ll have to get back to you about the U.S getting a taste of this sweet sweet goodness.
