H&M collaborates with Isabel Marant

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H&M has announced a collaboration with Parisian designer Isabel Marant, who’s to create a wardrobe of pieces inspired by her signature style, available November 14th 2013, in 250 stores worldwide and online.

The collection includes clothing and accessories for women and teenagers and Marant, who will for the first time also create a collection for men, said ‘I am flattered by this collaboration: H&M works with the best designers and this invitation is an exciting honour’.

The appeal of the Isabel Marant brand right now is that it marks you out as in tune with the times. The Isabel Marant look is the wardrobe we want for now. In other words: for a piece of the zeitgeist, at £29.99, join the queue.

Marant, 46, is the woman behind the off-duty-model/actress uniform that wallpapers the pages of Grazia. The look is bohemian and ethnic but done in a simple, chic way that says Parisian fashion insider rather than Edina from Ab Fab. It is cut to flatter – slim jeans, T-shirts with just the right amount of slouch, sweatshirts that finish at just the right point on the hips – but never body-conscious in a try-hard way. It is day-to-night dressing for women who would much rather head out for a casual glass of wine after work than lose hours to the Spanx-and-Carmen-rollers school of event-dressing. Show me any paparazzi shot of the beautiful people looking fabulous at Coachella, or touching down at JFK, or yacht-hopping in Ibiza, and I’ll show you a game of spot-the-Marant.

Marant has been a slowburn success story. For the first 15 years, her label enjoyed respect and modest sales, but it was when French Vogue’s Emanuelle Alt, a childhood friend, collaborated with Marant in styling the clothes that the look caught the public imagination. These days, Kate Moss, Alexa Chung and every cool girl in Paris describe themselves as diehard Marant fans. Marant herself says she is “a representative French girl … my clothes say more about me than anything else”. She wears little makeup, smokes roll-up cigarettes, and has a 10-year-old son with her partner of 16 years; she says they may marry when they retire and have more time. There is a pleasing mix of free-spirit and practicality in her clothes, which are head-turning without looking overdone. She has said that when a design turns out too spectacular or delicate she tends to go back to the drawing board, preferring to make something that is useful as well as glamorous. Her aim, she says, is to create “an ideal wardrobe, that you can do a lot with”.

Marant has been a vociferous opponent of high-street copies of her designs, calling the phenomenon “disgusting” and “vulgar”. Her decision to join forces with the high street suggests that she recognises that the oxygen of publicity given by making your fashion accessible is hugely valuable to high-end brands. And in a funny way, the very existence of Isabel Marant for H&M is a testament to the enduring importance of designer labels. After all, Marant-“inspired” peasant blouses, bomber jackets, cropped jeans and wedge trainers are all available on the high street right now. H&M’s versions will likely be crisper, cleaner and punchier – and, if past collections are our guide, far better quality than your average fast-fashion rip off.

The high street chain’s previous designer partnerships include Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney, Versace, Lanvin, Maison Martin Margiela and Marni.

Read More:

http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/2013/06/11/hm-design-collaboration-2013—news–updates