No, it's not the second coming of Christ, it's Isabel Marant x H&M. Everyone hold your horses.
H&M's newest designer collaboration with a favorite of the French fashion scene, Isabel Marant, hit stores with a bang earlier this month. Queues were the longest that H&M has ever seen, with people live-blogging their overnight camping experiences in front of all major H&M stores in London, published by The Guardian. Like every other collaboration with H&M, the mutually beneficial collection allows H&M all the consumer hype (and cash) that fuels high-end design houses, and it allows the designer collaborating with H&M a fair amount of exposure. According to popular belief, Isabel Marant was the least well-known designer to have collaborated with H&M; names like Maison Martin Margiela, Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney and Comme des Garcons were much more widely known to begin with. If you'd like an idea of just how much exposure H&M directs to its collaboration designers; the number of Google searches for "Isabel Marant" tripled during the month the collaboration was announced.
I was actually supposed to go to a private press preview of the collection while I was back in Singapore, but instead I decided to make rice-a-roni and have a sweatpants-and-movie-marathon day with my boyfriend. This wasn't because I was firmly opposed to the collection and wanted to make a statement, but the whole idea of H&M's countless collaborations seem the furthest thing from exciting anymore. Daniel Kulle, president of H&M North America, firmly declared to Fashionista.com that "Isabel will sell out in less than a week." And he was right - the pieces sold like hotcakes, because everyone wants to own something with Isabel Marant's (legitimate) name on it. People will do anything to hop on the fast-fashion bandwagon that instantly becomes old news as soon as you've paid up and got your hands on the bloody things. But after reading this article by Fashionista.com journalist Alyssa Vingan, my eyes were opened to the true nature and adverse effects of these designer collaborations. Imagine saving up your first few paychecks to finally be able to splurge on the bag of your dreams from your favorite designer, only to find that in a few months, a dangerously similar knock-off of your authentic bag will be reproduced in low-cost materials to the masses at a fraction of the price you paid, but nonetheless with that designer's name smacked on it (next to H&M). Don't cheap replicas churned out in thousands only serve to devalue the image of a designer and dilute the magic of authentic, timeless visions and ideals that are synonymous with such revered designers? Marc Beckman, CEO of Designers Management Agency, put it perfectly: "There's nothing wrong with selling for the masses, but the design should be original." Leather pant knock-offs from Marant's Fall 2010 collection, fringed booties from Summer 2010, the list goes on. We know Marant has the artistic capability to create inventive new designs for any collaboration that comes her way; heck, we've seen 9 years worth of her collections already. So why was the easy road of replicating existing designs taken?
In some ways, it's hard to tell if these replicas/knockoffs are a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand, the reason people fall in love with Marant is because of what they've seen on the runway, so do they love her existing pieces or her design aesthetic itself? The former calls for the easy job of producing thousands of identical runway pieces using cheap fabrics and low-cost production techniques (without so much input from Marant as signing a document allowing H&M to replicate her existing designs), but the latter calls for just a little more of Marant's authentic magic and undeniable skill in fashion design, in order to produce an exciting NEW collection for those of us who don't have the luxury of enjoying pieces from her own label. It's only when a comparison is made between copying and creating do we realize that perhaps something entirely fresh, new and from the chic depths of Marant's heart would've been a better choice to serve the hundreds of thousands of us who call the high-street price bracket our (only) sartorial home.
What do you think of Isabel Marant x H&M?
