On August 12, H&M released a collaboration collection with Sabyasachi. H&M collaborates with luxury designers every year, releasing a collection that looks like the designers but with very affordable pricing. In the past, they have collaborated with Balmain, Kenzo, Stella McCartney, Karl Lagerfeld, Jimmy Choo, Versace, Alexander Wang, Erdem, Moschino and so many more (the full list can be found here). These collaborations are always met with massive success and love as it makes the unattainable, very attainable.
When I heard that H&M had collaborated with Sabyasachi this year, I was very surprised. Because even though Sabyasachi is a household name amongst Indians, his popularity isn’t worldwide. This makes sense as he specializes in Indian formalwear, specifically bridal wear. In the last couple of years, in an effort of making the brand more international, Sabyasachi has really expanded into other areas, including a bag and shoe collaboration with Christian Louboutin and a bag collaboration with Harrods. However, their specialty still remains to be Indian clothing. At first, I thought the collection would only be released in India, where H&M has become a staple in the last decade, but the collection was actually released worldwide in select stores and online.
Previous H&M designer collaborations were heavily marketed to the public and were plastered everywhere on social media. Influencers often wore the pieces before the release and there would be a lot of anticipation and expectation. For this collection, however, the marketing was more subdued. Granted, I might be missing out on India-specific marketing as I live in America, but the collection was released worldwide and none of the popular Indian fashion influencers is talking about it. If this scaling back in marketing was intentional, it was a poor choice: from personal knowledge, I can confidently say that Indian women of all ages aspire to own a Sabyasachi piece. The 30-50-year-old, Indian moms demographic would definitely buy Sabyasachi pieces at those prices.
I, however, have mixed feelings about the collection.
On one hand, the concept of this was great: and an Indian luxury designer collaborating with a brand that has 4000 H&M stores worldwide and immense reach. It is so gratifying to see that the “made in India” label actually means something and is not just a reminder of cheap labor. Sabyasachi continues to break the barrier between the East and the West and I could not be more proud to be a fellow Bengali. More personally, I own pieces from the Balmain, Kenzo, and Erdem collaboration with H&M and I have always loved the idea of luxury brands collaborating with more affordable retailers. The quality is often better than H&M’s regular items and you can score an expensive look at a portion of the price.
On the other hand, the Sabyasachi x H&M collaboration was underwhelming. Sabyasachi is known for his bright colors, intricate pattern work and breathtaking attention to detail, all of which are missing from this collection. Instead, what we got were pieces that used simple ikat and block-printed textiles. The collection had one red saree with a very simple print and multiple pieces in a turquoise color scheme. I can understand that making it look truly like a Sabyasachi piece can be difficult on a budget, but Balmain had heavily blinged-out pieces that were still affordable. Sabyasachi was trying to make Indian wear more accessible to everyone and be able to be worn by everyone, but in the process of doing that they lost their brand identity. The collection is sold out on the website, marking its success, but I still found it unenthusiastic and unoriginal.