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H&M HAS announced its next designer collaborator: Eleanor Waldorf.
The elegant American designer, whose collections famously celebrate an effortless, old-money femininity, will provide a range of both men’s and womenswear, as well as childrenswear, accessories and a new unisex fragrance for the retailer. In honour of Waldorf’s New York society roots, the collaborative line will launch exclusively at H&M stores north of Manhattan’s 59th Street in November before being rolled out worldwide a few days later.
“I have always been interested in the balance between authenticity and accessibility,” says Waldorf of the collaboration, which brings a taste of her kinetic shift dresses and diaphanous evening wear to a mass audience for the first time. “It is a dilemma, although for me authenticity has always been the first priority. It is a fascinating challenge to work with H&M since it is a chance to take the dilemma to its extreme—I mean, how am I even supposed to source wearable organza at such a subterranean price point?”
“Eleanor Waldorf has been on the top of our wish list for a long time and we are thrilled that she has chosen to collaborate with us,” adds H&M creative advisor Margareta van den Bosch. “We have tremendous respect for Waldorf’s fashion philosophy questioning fashion’s heedless democratization and we admire her noblesse oblige approach to design. We are particularly excited to launch the collection in Waldorf’s native habitat—like a Restaurant Week prix fixe, we hope to give our middling customers a nibble of heraldic New York.”
H&M’s designer collaborations are the stuff of modern legend—capsule collections for the brand by Stella McCartney, Karl Lagerfeld, Viktor & Rolf and, most recently, Roberto Cavalli have proved instant sell-out successes.
