H&M Oxford Circus Relaunch

Today H&M reopened their Oxford Circus flagship which they have been refurbishing for the past year. The store opened at 1pm with a huge queue, countdown, red carpet and celebrity DJ's. The staff were handing out vita coco coconut water to all customers as well as bags of sweets which were obviously well received!

Inside, the store looked brilliant with eye catching displays and interesting mannequin styling. Each level has a strong mannequin grouping, very similar to Zara's window style! Something H&M are very good at is separating their different collections and dressing the mannequins to tie in with each collections customer base. 

The surprising highlight of the store is their shoe lounge, the first I have ever seen in a H&M store! Normally their shoes are crammed onto rails looking a mess, but at the new shoe lounge staff are on hand to retrieve your size. 

 

 

H&M: Oxford Circus, London

FLASHBACK: Lanvin for H&M November 2010

I recently came across these old pics of my favourite ever H&M collaboration with Lanvin! I still love the VM and products now and think the collaboration stayed really true to the Lanvin brand.

H&M: Oxford Circus, London

Maison Martin Margiela for H&M

On Thursday I visited the opening of H&M's most recent collaboration with Maison Martin Margiela at their Regents St store! The whole experience was very well organised with no pushing or drama with each group of 20 customers alotted a time slot of 10mins. I got to the store at half 10 and was told there was no way I would get to see the collection until at least 1pm as all the wristbands for the time slots were gone. I didn't bother to wait and just took as many pics as I could while I was there. I was not particuarly impressed with this collection, maybe it's because I'm not really a fan of Maison Martin Margiela anyway, I don't know. There were quite a few people who were clearly big fans of Maison Martin Margiela and were buying bags and bags full of stuff. The collection seemed to be selling quite well but there were no queues for the menswear section and when I had a look there was quite a lot of stuff left with staff bringing out more from the stock rooms regularly. I don't really feel like there was anything inspirational about the collaboration at all, although I'm sure there will be some people who disagree with me! The pieces for the collection were all very unique which I feel will look awful on the people that can't pull it off. Plus the quality of the pieces was very cheap with most being made in China yet costing quite a lot to buy! A few years ago I visited the H&M and Lanvin collaboration which was so much more impressive! The positive thing I would say about the collection is the branding was good. The bags, boxes, tickets, hangers etc were all consistent and quite simple yet looked really expensive. Below are all of the pics I took on the day:

Ladies window:

Mens Window: 

In Store:

Ladies wear: 

Mens Wear:

Product and Packaging:

H&M: Regent St, London