It’s only been three days since the most anticipated collaboration of the year, or maybe even the decade, was released, Alexander Wang X H&M. If you haven’t been having anxiety to get your hands on a piece from this fabulous collection since they announced it back in April at the Coachella festival, then you’re not a true fashion lover.
High fashion designs are not so reachable for most of us and H&M gets that. The Swedish brand Hennes & Mauritz is known for collaborating with international designers ever since 2004 and bringing affordable pieces to the everyday fashionistas. This time around, H&M teamed up for the first time with an American designer, Alexander Wang, for the capsule collection. In mid October after much anticipation the lookbook was revealed and it was everything we wished for and more. This collection features exclusively designed garments and accessories for men and women. Wang mixed innovative fabrics and technical details to achieve both fashion and function bringing the best of both worlds together.
It’s pretty much sporty-minded fantasy meets urban chic.
The 61-piece collection includes strappy scuba dresses, thick pullover shirts, cropped bra tops and shirts, leather joggers, and parkas. In addition there’s also boxing gloves, regular gloves, beanies, and duffels for you know, taking your outfit to the next level. Every single one of these pieces is replete with stand out Wang branding. The collection retails between $10 and $350 so there’s no reason not to own at least one piece.
November 6th was the release day and as expected the world went a little crazy. The website crashed a couple times due to the high traffic. The whole collection pretty much sold out online within the first couple of days of its debut. On twitter #alexanderwangxhm was trending. Costumers were given color-coded tags with time slots to be able to shop the pieces in stores. Others took more desperate measures and went on eBay where the pieces were already on sale for ridiculous prices. Days later the craziness ceased a bit. The prices of some of the pieces sold on eBay were lowered a little and there is still some merchandise left on some of the selected stores. But many fashion obsessed like me, that didn’t have the chance to sit outside an H&M overnight or wake up super early to be able to stand in line to be one of the first ones to get their hands on their oh so needed Wang pullover, are left wanting a piece of the treasure. Since every piece I wanted has already been sold out online, I will be making a four hour special trip to the big apple in a couple of days to get at least one shirt with the Wang logo all over it. Yes, that’s how fabulous and vital this collection is to some of us.
Unfortunately not everything is great news. After the big release a short film supposedly portraying children in India constructing the Alexander Wang X H&M collection was uploaded to YouTube (where it was later removed and then reuploaded to Vimeo). This left us wondering about the ethics behind the fashion label we love so much. The German fashion site “Dandy Dairy” produced the controversial video that was described as “promoting” and aimed to celebrate the economic production of the collaboration. On Friday H&M sent out a statement with an explanation: “The video in question is fake. The factory is not an H&M supplier. The Alexander Wang for H&M collection has been produced in China, Turkey and Italy only and not in India. The labels used for this collection are entirely black and not black on white as shown in the video. H&M does not accept child labour. Our child labour policy is based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Labour Organization.”
It wouldn’t be the first time Wang has been involved in a labor dispute. It would be unfortunate to learn our favorite brands are not doing the right thing. For now all we have left is to believe the brand representatives are being honest and this great collaboration can make its mark in history in a good way.
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