Fast fashion retail powerhouse H&M has collaborated with many designers over the years, including Versace, Lanvin, Alexander Wang, and Karl Lagerfeld, just to name a few. But their most recent collaboration with French fashion house Balmain is perhaps one of their most surprising yet.
Famously known for their ultra-luxe couture pieces, Balmain isn’t really the first name that comes to mind when thinking up the next H&M designer line. As Balmain’s creative director and french designer Olivier Rousteing points out in a recent interview with British GQ, “Balmain is super-expensive, so it was really a challenge. The H&M team knew this, too, but they knew what they were going for.”
Indeed, creating high-end fashion lines at low-end prices is always a difficult task, but a collaboration with Balmain, whose pieces typically exude luxury, would seem to be extra difficult, if not impossible, for an affordable retail chain like H&M to pull off. After all, there’s only so much material and craftsmanship you can strip from a luxe piece of clothing before it becomes, well, rather un-luxe. Nevertheless, H&M and Balmain were clearly up for the task. As Rousteing continues, “They (H&M) wanted the luxury, they wanted the sharpness of the jackets. The challenge was to make it affordable, so we changed the fabrics and techniques. We did a little less embroidery. It was a compromise, but we made certain the quality was still there.”
And at first glance, it certainly looks that way. While we weren’t able to feel that quality firsthand just yet, we were able to see pictures of it. And from the looks of things, the pieces do seem to maintain that extravagant, lavish look that Balmain’s famously known for. Let’s just hope those fabric and technique changes hold up after a few weeks of regular everyday wear. If they do, well, this new designer collaboration could prove to be one of H&M’s most successful yet.
The Balmain x H&M collection is scheduled to debut November 5th. To read more about the collaboration, check out the full interview with Olivier Rousteing at British GQ.
