Heron Preston to become H&M's Creative Menswear Advisor

Swedish fast fashion brand H&M has just announced that Heron Preston will be joining the design team as a creative consultant, contributing to the brand's menswear line, and launching a series of seasonal capsule collections. After the success of last February's collaboration with Mugler, a clothing line that was comparatively cheaper than that of the luxury brand, making its debut one year after Thierry Mugler’s passing, it seems that H&M is determined to further consolidate its position within the industry as an alternative to the big luxury brands. 

In the past, the fast fashion brand has signed some of the most popular collab in the history of luxury-fast fashion partnerships. H&M's collaborations with Margiela in 2012, with Stella McCartney in 2005, and with Versace in 2011 remain memorable. Preston's appointment alongside the creative direction of H&M's menswear line represents the brand's need to tap into a new gap in the market, given the increasing growth of other fast fashion giants such as Temu and Shein. The partnership with the San Francisco designer will be called H2, and will aim to embed Preston's creative vision «inside the processes» of H&M, said the brand's director of menswear business, Daniel Herrmann. The first Preston-designed capsule, which will feature 40 garments, will debut in H&M stores next year, but at the same time the designer will be responsible for helping to steer four pillars of the brand's menswear line, such as design advisory, talent curation, fashion innovation, and special collections. In the future, Preston and H&M will launch an initiative that will allow consumers to deliver their own clothes to the company so that they can be used in the designer's capsules, contributing to H&M's circularity project. «The idea, at first, is for our work to be very experimental,» said Preston, «we’re hoping for what we create through H2 to inform the wider H&M design operation.»

In recent years, Preston has achieved great success in the streetwear industry, working alongside Virgil Abloh for Off-White, collaborating with Ye, and signing several collaborations with Calvin Klein and Nike. His eponymous brand, launched in 2017 with the support of New Guards Group, remains one of the most beloved names in the luxury streetwear scene. «I was bored at the time H&M approached me, but what they were offering was more than a typical boring collaboration, more than just about product,» said the young designer. «If they’d just asked me to slap my logo on some T-shirts and hoodies, I probably would have told them no.»