Going wild for Wang

The highly anticipated collaboration of New York designer, Alexander Wang with Swedish retailer, H&M was nothing short of exciting as store doors opened on 6^th November .

The announcement was made back in April and after a striking catwalk performance, numerous campaign images and a teaser promotional fashion film staring models Raquel Zimmermann, Joan Smalls, Natasha Poly, Isabeli Fontana and footballer Andy Carroll, there was no wonder that Wang fans the world over started queuing from ungodly hours to get their hands on the long-awaited 61–piece sports-inspired collection.

The first 420 shoppers in line were divided into groups of 30 through the use of colour-coded bracelets, and each group was then given only 15 minutes to shop the collection. Shoppers thereafter were open to whatever was left, which was undoubtedly not much at all!

The H&M website crashed ten minutes prior to the release, with the majority of items selling out within a few hours. Items were very quick to appear on eBay selling for a huge mark up on their retail prices. A silver puffer jacket retailing at £249.99 was placed on the auction website for a huge £599.99, along with a pair of lace up heeled boots that could be bought for £129.99 in store and are now selling for £369.99. Alexander Wang stated that he wanted to keep the collection limited and exclusive. He also predicted that his designs would be selling on bidding websites, therefore it comes as no surprise.

H&M are no strangers to designer collaborations with the previous including Karl Lagerfeld, Versace and Isabel Marant. However, the brand felt they were doing something different with this year’s choice: “We chose Alexander because we had never made a sport collection and I think he really brought sport into fashion, he’s a great designer, and someone that I’ve been looking at for a while actually, and he is the first American that we have collaborated with,” Margareta Van den Bosh, the brand’s creative advisor explained.

H&M designer collaborations seem to never fail to deliver, leaving us wondering what is in store for 2015?

Emily Harris