Everyone’s going nuts about Lanvin (Hearts) H&M, the popular French fashion house’s diffusion line that is selling like hotcakes at 24 stores across the United States. Yesterday, NY Mag reported that some shoppers are spending as much on this semi-affordable line as they likely would on actual Lanvin clothing.
But this is hardly a new phenomenon. Diffusion lines have been huge in the last few years, with everyone from Charlotte Ronson (with I Heart Ronson for JCPenney) to Jean Paul Gaultier (for Target) to Christian Siriano (for Payless) getting in on this profitable trend. It could be argued that Isaac Mizrahi, with his hugely popular Target line, repopularized diffusion lines by proving that a designer could lower himself to the level of a major retailer without completely compromising his credibility. Target’s subsequent limited edition designer lines have been pretty excellent all around, but no store (not counting pop-up shops) has managed to create more of a fervor around their diffusion lines than H&M. Shoppers queue up for hours in the cold and fight each other for the mid-priced clothing chain’s guest designer lines like they’re the new Apple gadget, and why?
The whole thing really started with the late Halston, otherwise known as Roy Halston Frowick, who was best known for designing Jackie O’s famous pillbox hat and for dressing some of the most fashionable ladies of the 70s, from Anjelica Huston to Bianca Jagger.
He was also known for his daring move of signing a deal with JCPenney to make a fashion and accessory line at a price point that was accessible to the common woman. Interestingly, he also designed the iconic Girl Scout and NYPD uniforms, but that’s a story for another time.
It’s interesting to think how far fashion has come since that time, and yet how little the industry’s business model has changed. People are still oohing and aahing over the same move that made news in Halston’s day, but what else is different? I suppose internet shopping has changed things, with websites like ShopStyle and Topshop getting ordinary people interested in designers they might not have known about. But hasn’t that always been the point of browsing the racks at department stores? One could argue that internet shopping, aside from the laziness and impulsivity and insomnia that it accommodates, is really not that different from regular shopping. If anything, it’s harder to get the size and fit right, or to see if something will look good on you. Google surprised everyone by announcing its new site Boutiques.com the other day, promising to change the way people shop for clothing by doing…er, something or another (there are details in this Los Angeles Times article), but we’ll have to wait and see how that pans out. In the meantime, I’d better go get in line at H&M. Just kidding, I’m a freelancer! I’m too poor to buy that shit.
Posted in Inspiration, Shopping
Tags: apparel
