[ot-caption title=”The H&M x Kenzo collection is filled with bright colors and bold animal prints, adding a vibrancy to this year’s designer collaboration. (via Ava Goldstone, junior)”]

[spacer height=”10px” id=”2″]H&M’s designer collaborations have been known to provide new, fresh looks that often diverge from the themes of past collections to provide customers variety when it comes to choosing what to wear, at more affordable prices than the designer’s regular retail pricing. Last year’s partnership with Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing was wildly successful, featuring looks that were elegant, refined, and undeniably popular among fashion-forward H&M customers. Countless model celebrities promoted the collection, including Kendall Jenner, Gigi Hadid, and Jourdan Dunn. The wide success and popularity of the H&M x Balmain collaboration, will be tough to surpass, but it seems like H&M and their new partner in collaboration have risen to the challenge.

[spacer height=”10px” id=”2″]The French brand Kenzo has a long history of collaborating with other designers in creating innovative and unique collections. Known for its colorful, bold, and playful aesthetic, Kenzo’s collaboration will be a departure from the glamor and refinement of Balmain, but with celebrities like Iman, Chance the Rapper, Rosario Dawson, and Suboi modeling the collection in a series of ads released October 17, the project’s success is imminent. The pictures released, so far have proven that the collaboration is truly an embodiment of the diversity, creativity, enthusiasm, and originality in which Kenzo prides itself. Featuring bold pops of color, feminine silhouettes, and unique embellishments, the collection has a wide range of both clothing items and costs, some costing as low as $35 and others as high as over $400.

[spacer height=”10px” id=”2″]The creative minds representing Kenzo in this collaboration are designers Carol Lim and Humberto Leon, who were appointed Artistic Directors in 2011. The two designers have always shared a common philosophy centered around authenticity and originality, the intrepid and the eccentric. Leon commented in an interview with H&M Magazine, “People nowadays have so many options for what they want to wear and how they want to express themselves and that’s great. It just means we have to be that much more attentive and to continue to makes clothes that people can get excited about.” Simultaneously, the collection is also meant to be homage to the founder Kenzo Takada, who is considered by many to have revolutionized women’s fashion as a visionary in the use of bright colors and silhouettes that seem to carry an air of enthusiasm, youthfulness, and fun in themselves. However, the two designers also intend to create looks influenced by their own creativity and unique perspective. Lim stated in an interview with Vogue, “People have always told us, ‘I remember this Kenzo collection, are you guys going to bring back x, y, z?’ We tend not to think that way; the archive informs us in subtle ways. But this allows us to have a more direct conversation, which I think people will be excited about: the present customer, the original customer, and a new customer.”  The result of the merging of these creative perspectives, along with that of H&M’s own designers and creative advisors, is a unique, eccentric, and bold collection that promises to create ripples, if not waves, in the fashion industry.

[spacer height=”10px” id=”2″]The collection is set to reach 250 H&M stores worldwide and online on November 3rd.

[spacer height=”10px” id=”2″]Source: H&M Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Fashionista