Fashion

The best of H&m

The macaroons I brought back from Paris Fashion Week hadn’t even been finished yet when I got an invite for another press trip to… Paris.

The invite was from H&M who had chosen the city of light to present their new Conscious Collection. It just so happens that I love H&M and I love Paris, so before I knew it, I was back in the Thalys headed towards the luxurious Westin Hotel smack dab in the middle of the Tuileries and Place Vendôme.

The Conscious Collection is a very special and highly exclusive collection in which H&M focuses on the durability of clothing. H&M has about 200 employees working in their ‘sustainability’ department  striving to create products as tenacious as possible. Good for our planet and great for the people working in the factories – that’s their goal. Noblesse oblige, as one of the biggest fashion chains out there, H&M wants to create things that aren’t only great for right now, but are great in the long run too.

A lot of the reactions when I told people why I was heading to Paris was: ‘Wait, durability and H&M, those two don’t really correlate now do they? Aren’t they all about mass production and trying to get new products in their stores every two weeks making us spend tons of money?’

And the press wasn’t very mild during the panel discussion either. ‘Wouldn’t it be a better move to start producing less?’ and ‘Isn’t it a part of your job to re-educate your audience?’ These were some of the questions from journalists who were all decked out in the latest trends and looked like they too are guilty of partaking in multiple shopping sprees a week.

We write all about trends and collections and get people to head to stores too. ‘We don’t force our customers to buy anything,’ was what Anne Gedda said, head of the sustainability department. ‘What we want is to produce clothing that is affordable for the larger population while providing more job opportunities in less fortunate countries.’

”The Conscious Collection focuses on another part of sustainability: reusing materials.”

H&M has started the Fair Wage Project in 68 of their factories (out of the 150 that they have). This project makes sure that their workers’ basic needs should be paid by all our commercial goods suppliers. They hope to integrate this system in all 150 of their factories by 2018.

The Conscious Collection focuses on another part of sustainability: reusing materials. This collection consists of a jacket made out of recycled plastic bottles. There is embroidery from recycled glass and earrings made out of Denimite, compressed denim which has been transformed into a very art deco-like material. The shirts have been made up of organic cotton and silk from larvae that live in mulberry trees.

Besides all the wonderful steps this collection is making regarding fair wage and sustainability, it’s also a collection that’s going to make you greedy. Three beautiful wedding gowns, a red carpet worthy black skirt that’s just a tiny bit longer in the back than it is in the front, a beige lace top that looks like you just stepped straight out of Donwton Abbey… And then picture all this clothing being displayed at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in the Louvre and in the evening we were there for drinks with company like Julia Restoin Roitfeld.

If next year their collection is made in all the factories that have implemented the wonderful Fair Wage Project and the following year H&M has their own factories that take great care of their employees just as well as they take care of our clothing, then I’ll treat everyone to champagne. And macaroons of course.

The collection can be found in stores from April 7th onwards and the items look so great, they’ll last you a long time.