With the Versace for H&M collection hype gaining momentum at lightening speed (so rapid those predictions of stampedes and catfights were all together too accurate) our feelings towards the collection can't help but be mixed. Don't get us wrong, it ain't the actual collection that riles us (studs, leather and Donatella, what's not to love??), but the surrounding hoopla, seems a little… well, cheap....

High-profile designer collabs with high street classics are often tinged with a touch (or dollop) of hysteria. H&M have been bumming designer collaborations since 2004 - and whilst we welcome exposure of brilliant fashion voices to a larger demographic - the image of hysterical femmes clawing at Topshop's windows to a posing Kate Moss after one too many shots in their Starbucks is tragically the key image which refuses to evactuate our brains when this kind of collab comes around. 

Who really remembers the collections? Moreover the headlines and imagery of camped out fashion victims? Stroll ten paces down Oxford Circus and you'll find Call-Of-Duty-3-Weapons-Of-Warfare-esque shoot 'em up with desperate fashion fans carrying out the same frenzied (read: sex-starved? Desperate?) blood-lust. Shudder. Definitely not chic. But viewing the collection, there's something about Versace for H&M that is making us wonder whether shunning the tent was wise. We're impressed at the clever are re-working of Versace classics; studded leathers, prints that defined the genre: perhaps worth enduring thosee elbows to the wind-pipe after all.

Posted on November 20, 2011 at 7:37:18 by Alice Nyong