Lana Del Rey and her collaboration with H&M

Originally Hennes & Mauritz Swedish fashion brand, H&M, simplified for better public perception, has become the number one name in the fast - fashion. The worldwide awareness about the H&M brand was quite rapidly obtained through opening large retail stores placed everywhere on the planet. Today, H&M has something for anybody, women, men, teenagers, children or babies. Essentially, all sections of society can find their soul matched piece of clothing in H&M. The philosophy behind the H&M collections seems to be an innovation and surprise, which added to the impressive sense of speculating the right moment for market domination of the managers, transformed H&M into a fashion giant. The managers from H&M Have been knitting an interesting brand development policy-collaboration or featuring with well known and highly respected names in fashion and style industry. Names like Karl Largefeld, Stella McCartney, Viktor & Rolf, Madonna, Roberto Cavalli, Kylie Minogue, Jimmy Choo, Versace, Lavin, Marni and avant-garde label Maison Martin Margiela are tied with H&M. The inter-brand policy certainly works wonders for H&M.

Lana del Rey for H&M Autumn / Winter  2012

The fall/winter 2012-2013 women's collection has as a front face Lana Del Rey. The collection breathes out retro air through the 60’s inspired models. But who is Lana Del Rey? And why is she a valuable asset for H&M image? In the past, celebrities associated with H&M were worldwide known. But for this collection image selection, H&M shows its capacity of innovation and trend setting icon figure. While her stage name sounds so Spanish high aristocracy, Lana Del Rey is in fact Lizzie Grant, a 26 year old American singer. She searched for her singing talent for quite some time, fighting with drugs and alcohol addiction from early ages.

H&M advertising with Lana del Rey

I have to admit that I never heard of her, until I didn’t see a giant billboard advertising the pink cashmere sweater from the latest H&M winter collection. It stated: ”Lana Del Rey wears pink cashmere sweater by H&M”. So I Googled her and listened some of songs from her latest album, which lead me to think about the “bad girls” with whiskey on their lips and diamantes on their hands. Her languorous style of singing and the 60’s look made me understand why she of all the new young expressive faces, for the H&M collection. She breaks the icon image of traditional fashion model-tall, skinny, XS measures and often blonde. Lana Del Rey was chosen for H&M’s image collection thanks to her mysterious 60’s look. She reminds us of the times when women were divas and never heard of the androgen style.

For this H&M campaign, the hair-style and the make up are essentially specific for Lana Del Rey, but the rest represents an important change of style for her. Aside from some hair accessories, we could say that her outfits are without any color; mainly white and black combinations. The surprise is even bigger since the collection seemed to have been created for Lana exclusively. The pink cashmere, the small cute bows and other retro jewelry are made for her. The look in hips hugging tight leather skinny with pointed toe short boots matched with puffed jacket doesn’t seem like her. I guess H&M was going for contrasting ideologies and styles to reveal the utterly contemporary spirit of this collection. The clothes are great. The design is exquisite. But did Lana Del Rey was the right choice for H&M image? I think they were right on the money with her and she made the difference to accomplish a huge success.