Just when we’re getting over the news of Rihanna’s design collaboration with Dior and Olivier Rousteing’s collaboration with NikeLAB, H&M go and drop the news that they’re releasing a collaborative range with Kenzo.
The much loved label’s Carol Lim and Humberto Leon will create a 250 piece line of men’s and womenswear, and in a similar fashion to Balmain’s recent range with the highstreet giant, they’ll also put on a show pre-launch in October, somewhere in London.
The fact there’ll be a fashion party is about where the comparisons will end, with H&M’s head of design, Ann-Sofie Johansson telling Vogue exclusively of the collab;
“Balmain was glamorous and sexy, and this is vibrant, young, and fun. We’ve had our eyes on Carol and Humberto at Kenzo for a few years. It seemed right to do the collaboration with them now.
It’s totally different than the Balmain one; we really like to pick different designers, to show our customers different aesthetics.”
The Kenzo duo, who are well-versed in collaboration, working as a pair and with top brands like Opening Ceremony and Vans already under their belt, explained;
“We’re in company with a great list of people who’ve done [collaborations with H&M], and it felt like a nice platform, to do something in a really big way. It felt like we could make a large impact doing something with them.
[…] To us, the H&M collaborations have always felt like celebrations of the brands they’ve done them with. They’ve done them so well. We’re fans of all of them – the Viktor & Rolf, the Margiela. They’re so iconic.
What Olivier [from Balmain] did was really fun. And we remember buying when H&M did the first one with Karl Lagerfeld [and] still own those pieces.”
On what we can look forward to, the talents hint that the archives will be coming out; that the history of the brand will emerge in the collection, saying;
“We decided to treat the collaboration as a conversation between us andKenzo Takada, and what he began.
People have always told us, ‘I remember this Kenzo collection, are you guys going to bring back x, y, z?’ We tend not to think that way; the archive informs us in subtle ways. But this allows us to have a more direct conversation, which I think people will be excited about: the present customer, the original customer, and a new customer.
What Kenzo Takada began was so revolutionary; it’s what attracted us to the brand to begin with. The idea is to celebrate where he began and where we’ve taken it – not only the archive of what he did but what we’ve worked on.”
Keen Kenzo fans can look forward “a femininity”, “fun” and “a tactile approach to techniques and embroideries, embellishments.” But while we wait for Kenzo’s H&M collection to drop on November 3rd 2016, there’s a teaser video announcing the collaboration here below – take a look and tell us what you think @SPICETVAFRICA.
Video & image source: Youtube.com/Kenzo, The-talks.com, Dazeddigital.com
