SPA brands collaborating with luxury labels become trend

2016 Fall Collection of H&M and Kenzo collaboration campaign image / Courtesy of H&M

H&M’s collaboration with Kenzo hit Korea

By Kim Jae-heun

The Swedish multinational clothing-retail company H&M unveiled its new collaboration line with French luxury house Kenzo on Nov. 3, bringing some 100 customers to queue outside the store a day before the line’s release.

H&M’s collaboration with luxury brands has attracted many fashionistas every fall as it presents limited edition products of established fashion designer clothing at reasonable prices.

Last year, the Swedish brand initiated collaboration with another French high-end fashion company Balmain and nearly 400 people waited in a long queue from four days before the opening day at Myeongdong store in Seoul. Some popular items of the collaboration line were resold at much higher prices, which resulted in shoppers fighting for certain products in the store.

This year, H&M’s new items designed with Kenzo’s creative directors Humberto Leon and Carol Lim were introduced in four offline stores to prevent such accidents in Myeongdong, Apgujeong and Jamsil in Seoul and Shinsegae in Busan. The new collections consist of 38 women’s items of apparel, 30 menswear items and 38 accessories that are inspired from the designs of the luxury brand founder Kenzo Takada in 1970s to 1980. Leon and Lim used contrasting colors in the clothing and added ribbon and frill decorations to show the unique identity of Kenzo.

H&M is one of the first Specialty stores retailing Private label Apparel (SPA) brands to present collaboration lines including its limited items of Chanel’s designer Karl Lagerfeld in 2004. Recent collaboration rollouts have been made with Maison Martin Margiela in 2012, Isabel Marant in 2013 and Alexaner Wang the following year. H&M has collaborated a total of 13 times.

The collaboration strategy is somewhat more meaningful for H&M than only selling its products as fashion brands. If people remembered the SPA brands as cheap clothing before, the collaboration with high-end fashion designers proved its marketability as fashion items. H&M’s particular fall rollouts in collaboration with Marni in 2012 became the historical event in captivating not only female customers but also male customers with elegant designs and quality aura with the dot pattern. Since then, many other SPA brands have joined the trend to collaborate with luxury clothing companies and famous fashion designers.

Japanese casual wear designer Uniqlo is another popular company for its collaboration with high-end fashion brands. It has made the announcement that it will present its third collaboration with French global fashion icon Carine Roitfeld for their fall collection. Roitfeld was the chief editor of French Vogue magazine for 10 years up to 2011 and she consulted various high-end fashion houses like Gucci, Versace, Yves Saint Laurent and Tom Ford.

Uniqlo is comparatively young in the collaboration scene and it has been introducing limited edition items made by well-known designers and brands such as Jil Snader, Christophe Lemaire, Theory, Alexandre Plokhov and Opening Ceremony and Liberty.

Korean SPA brand 8 Second also enjoyed its success in collaboration with fashion icon G-dragon from hip-hop boy band BIGBANG. The company said its collaboration with the singer has boosted monthly sales by nearly 70 percent and it was especially popular in China where some 1,000 customers gathered at the store in Shanghai on the opening day.