HOW ISABEL MARANT KEEPS HER COOL

I read this article over on Elle a couple of days ago and couldn't resist a reblog! I love Marant and cannot wait to see what gems the collaboration with H&M brings, although I wish that I had more than a student budget to enjoy it on!! She is the epitome of cool and her collections, in my eyes, sum up elegant chic. The Parisian launch party made me so jealous, even just from watching the youtube vid. To me it is the designer label that lacks pretence and makes everyone look good (although of course being a 6ft and a bit stunning model always helps I suppose...). Anyway, roll on Thursday and lets hope H&Ms website doesn't crash too quickly!!

Article source here.
Over the past few years the label has become every model, starlet, and downtown scenester’s worst kept secret. And with Marant’s collaboration with H&M set to hit 250 stores around the world and online come November 14, the secret is officially out. Can she maintain her cult-appeal when she hits the mainstream?

The collection, an assemblage of greatest hits from Marant’s past runway shows (as well as, for the first time, kids and menswear) should have women lining up outside H&M doors for days (or at least overnight). At the Paris launch event, party goers were allowed to pre-shop the collection at a pop-up shop. One girl convulsed in sobs on her way in. When ELLE posted a photo of the collection on Instagram, the post racked up comments like: “I'm taking off from work just to get the goods!!!” and “Dying. Can't wait.”

“I don’t want to be a rockstar,” Marant said at a recent press preview of the collection, referring to an incident when she was recognized and mobbed at the airport. But it may be too late for that.

In her nearly 20 years in business, Marant has obviously created something that resonates strongly with shoppers.  The Wall Street Journal reports  that sales have increased at 30 percent each year she’s been in business, even during the recession. So what’s in her secret sauce?

“She launched [in 1994] just when big brands were building their businesses on logo-driven products. In contrast, everything she did felt really personal because it was based on lifestyle choices versus status-driven concerns,” Anne Slowey, ELLE’s fashion news director points out. “It was as if she were offering every covetable vintage find, only updated into modern-day must-haves. But because her designs really are about the girl and not the label, it's a classic case of the girl wearing the clothes rather than the reverse. There's nothing cooler than that.”

Jen Mankins, owner of popular Brooklyn chainlet Bird, has been stocking Marant for six years, and her highly discerning clientele can’t get enough. “The clothes are very wearable and easy--made for living life and not being too precious,” Mankins says. “I think customers now have memories of wearing something of hers all the time, because they just become wardrobe staples, so you want to go back to her again and again each season to find new favorites.”

If you ask Marant, she says it’s as simple as designing the clothes she’d like to wear herself. “I'm a consumer as well, and each season when I start a collection I ask myself, 'Oh my god, again another collection, there are so many clothes everywhere… what will make the shopper say I'm going to buy this rather than that,’” Marant tells ELLE.com. It’s the kind of thinking that churns out hit after hit--from the now ubiquitously knocked off wedge sneaker to the cropped printed jeans. “Sometimes you have this magic moment when you can really achieve something that is a hit,” Marant says. “And, generally, when I'm doing it, I know when I really make something that is strong because I cannot wait to have it.”

Of course, the problem then becomes that everyone wants “it” (like those aforementioned wedge sneakers). And since most of the young women who lust after Marant’s designs can’t afford the prohibitively high price tags attached to them (the sneaks cost nearly $700), they turn to the fast fashion retailers who knock off Marant’s designs. When asked about being copied, Marant says bluntly, “I hate them.”

By teaming up with H&M, Marant says she hopes to give her fans something they can afford as well as curb some of the copying. “I've been so much copied by this kind of fast fashion, so [the H&M collaboration] was also a way for me to say, ‘Okay, I was at the origin of these designs.”

Sure, by collaborating with H&M, Marant risks giving up some of the “it” factor and exclusivity that her high-priced line affords. She’ll be more exposed than she’s ever been before. It’s a big step for the laid back designer, who is even quite shy about doing interviews. But she's also undeniably ambitious. Even if she doesn't mean it to be, the Isabel Marant brand is a force. And bringing it to the masses might just make it unbeatable.

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And if that's not enough there's a sneak peak of the collection here.