Famous designers for clothing retailers like Zara, H&M, Mango

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.

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.

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.

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.