For a couple of years street fashion
retailers like Zara, H&M and Mango fought for market supremacy
with American brands like Gap, Tommy Hilfiger and Donna Karen. Two of
best selling street fashion retailers are Spanish with similar
managing team, but their marketing strategies are much resembling
with those from H&M. It is true that the selling numbers were
astronomic just by featuring fast fashion campaigns and opening large
clothing retail store all over the world, but the rumors of cheap and
not so stylish clothing determined the street fashion brand managers
to come up with a bold strategy in order to bring the glamour and the
style from the haute couture fashion boutiques. They teamed up with
famous designers like Stella McCartney, Karl Lagerfeld or Roberto
Cavalli. It is easy to understand what the interest was for the
street fashion retailers but what about the other party? The famous
designers target through their collection mainly the exclusive high
fashion slice, so with featuring collection with H&M, Zara or
Mango they are given the opportunity to tackle the street fashion
section. This way H&M, Zara and Mango collection feature cut
price styles seen only in high fashion catwalk with breathtaking
speed.
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| Lanvin for H&M |
The Swedish retailer, H&M, seems to
have been the one who open the path of famous designers featuring in
street fashion collections, in 2004 with world famous Channel
designer Karl Lagerfeld. At the time with three minute commercials
and giant billboard, the H&M Karl Lagerfeld collection sold out
within a day in fashion headquarters like London, Madrid, Milan,
Munich and even Channel’s home town Paris. This master market hit
showed that a bound between exclusive labeled high fashion and main
street style is possible and meat a democratization of street fashion
retails. After Karl, next collections from H&M were almost always
signed by a famous designer, like Stella McCartney, Lavin, Jimmy Choo
for shoes and bags, Marni, Roberto Cavalli, Versace and Madonna. For
the last collections, H&M tackles into an avant-garde version for
high street fashion style through collaborations with Viktor&Rolf
and now Maison Martin Margiela for latest fall 2012 collection.
What’s next? Unexpectedly, H&M will go with Anna Delo Russo,
the fashion director of Vogue in Japan and will lunch a bohemian chic
fashion collection filled with maxi vintage jewelry.
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| Roberto Cavalli for H&M |
Competing closely with H&M, there
on the top of best selling clothing retailer, is Spanish brand Zara.
From the start, Zara’s collections were very close of the high
street fashion idea. Their campaigns are rather discreet and take
their bets with controversial figures to advertise their collections.
Zara’s has a well established range of basic designers that carried
out their collections year after year. Their brand marketing is
through almost zero advertising, which has an unusual effect of
increased curiosity from the public. At one time Loius Vuitton said
that Zara is “possibly the most innovative and devastating retailer
in the world”. It is said that it takes Zara only two weeks to
lunch a new product, which might be the reason why Zara is the best
selling brand in high street fashion.
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| Karl Lagerfeld for H&M |
The other important Spanish street
fashion brand is Mango. It could be said that the Spanish version of
street fashion retailers Start Wars is given between Zara and Mango.
Their designs are much in the same section with similar inspirational
motifs. Still, the master hit from Mango came with choosing famous
models like the Cruz sisters and now Kate Moss to put their
signatures on the exclusive collections. Since 2003 Celestino Garcia
is the head designer for Mango and earned the admiration and support
of Carolina Herrera and Jean Paul Gaultier.
