The high-end fast fashion brand H&M, has been throwing sticks, stones, and statements at beauty standards in recent years.The company started making waves back in 2004, when the company’s current creative director, Donald Schiener, debuted into the fashion scene. The company has never been shy about pushing standards. Scheiner even once said, “No risk, no gain”. The company has done an eccentric amount collaborative campaigns with high-end brands and public icons since 2004. The collaborations have pushed boundaries not just in beauty but quality. Notable collaborations are H&M X Balmain, Alexander Wang x H&M, Karl Lagerfeld X H&M , and Beyonce. The company finds success in these collaborations because of the controversial opinions H&M strategically portrays with its campaigns.
H&M’s marketing techniques are very intriguing. They try to give high-end global looks for a sustainable and affordable price, while encouraging people to dress how they please . The street brand comes from its Swedish heritage, and it keeps true to its beginnings. The collections are always targeted for daring, bad-ass, style conscious young adults who like quality and affordability over anything else . They market this by partnering with high end brands and public icons who know how to make a statement with not just their clothes, but their personality. It’s no surprise H&M is one of the top street brands in the world when their techniques are fanatically innovative.
H&M has been on a seriously perilous roll with its campaigns since autumn of last year. The company has been recently possessed with redefining people's expectations about sexuality, sex, sexes, and class . New York’s recent Fashion Week was no exception. H&M dropped its new autumn campaign of 2016, during the dead middle of New York Fashion Week on September 11th. All eyes were peeled and ready for this season’s ad . The public was bubbling with keenness, because last season had Kaitlin Jenner as a model and spokesperson, asking the the audience to question what victory means. Last year's autumn ad Close the Loop talked about how “there are no rules in fashion, besides recycling”. That ad portrayed men dressing like women, women dressing like men, people of all ethnicities, classes, and sizes dressing how they please while being environmentally conscious. The expectations for this season were taller than the Empire State Building, and H&M took them to Burj Khalifa.
H&M’s ad, New Autumn Collection 2016, brings up a solemn social oppression that is happening today - women are still told to be ladylike. Before anything appears on the screen, you hear something close to seventies music gently building. Then you see and feel the red glow of the neon red sign that is H&M, as it follows multiple diverse women from behind as they walk away. The first person is a full-figured women doing a lazily confident walk to bathroom in her Calvin Klein like sports bra and underwear . This opening is extremely bold considering how the public likes to see lean, pinched models with boobs and a butt, and this women has rolls, creases, and CELLULITE! The next scene is the side profile of model who has on heavy metallic earrings and a maroon bomber jacket . If a person would do a quick five second Google search they would discover the women is a transgender actress, model, and activist . The ad doesn’t list the names of the women involved the ad bluntly, because H&M wanted the viewer to see the women as their actions and freedom. The surprises of the add don't stop there. The next two women who are seen on the screen are women with masculine and feminine features. The first one is a women dressed in masculine clothes with a feminine, short bob-cut. The camera zooms in and the viewer can see she has a nose piercing and a bright smile ,while she strolls around the top of a high rise building. The women that comes on seconds after has a shaved head but is dressed in soft neutral colours and put into a 1920’s silhouette . These two women expose the viewer to the concept that women can be feminine and masculine at the same time and still be a lady. The next scenes blur where you see buff women in slip dresses, African women embracing their natural hair, women cleaning their teeth with forks, and even women who still dress like tom-boys. Then suddenly the variation of woman picks up again. We are exposed to feminine lesbian women, professional women slouching in their work outfits at business parties, and women dressed in a hippy styled dress man-spreading on the subway. In the last two scenes, the audience is exposed to are unbeatably risqué- and audience loved it. The viewer first sees off-duty model unzip her mom jeans so she can gel on her bed and stuff a monstrous burger and fries into her mouth. After she is done she stretches out and the viewer sees her red armpit hair, and she smiles as if to laugh. Then, last fives seconds of this two minute commercial shows the lesbains from before kissing underwater. Then it ends. Just like that, H&M put its logo one more time, and that was it. The audience of New York Fashion week was left gaping like fishes, because of the two minute add that covered 100 billion topics about what being ladylike really means. The ad quickly took to Twitter like a wildfire where the public caught on.
That wasn’t the only thing the public caught on to. The public quickly started asking questions about the music that accompanied the -now- worldwide trending ad. The song was discovered to be a cover of a iconic song from 1971. The song was no other than by Paula Anka and Tom Jones, She's a Lady. This song was thought to make waves during 1971 when it used for the second wave of feminism to show how women were seen as accessories to men, and should remain so. This time however it wasn’t only used, it was tweaked and remixed to make it into a women’s empowerment song. H&M went to a women who stood for exactly what they wanted. She is a part of the modern sounding music duo Lion Babe, Jillian Hervey. Hervey has been known to encourage society to not just trend “diversity and individuality”, but to push and aim to actually change boundaries on things internationally . She even stated in her interview with H&M , “I want empathy, intelligence and self-awareness to be what our society aspires to consume, not division, material needs and fear. After hearing what H&M wanted, Hervey started working immediately with her duo member, Lucas Goodman.When she was done, H&M was so inspired by her that they asked her to be in the ad. She said yes immediately. She is the African women embracing her curls and thick hair, while throwing food in a restaurant and cleaning her teeth with a fork that viewer sees in the ad. Lion Babe’s part in H&M’s New Autumn Collection 2016 ad was just another puzzle piece in the the masterpiece of the ad. This ad is another fine example of how fearless and innovative H&M is as company. They never hold back, not even recently, with their possessed attitude to redefine people's expectations about sexuality, sex, sexes, and class .
