For college students on a budget, the promise of designer clothes at fast-fashion prices is impossibly exciting. Designer collaborations with affordable retailers like Target, H&M and Gap have become hugely popular, but a recent partnership has me questioning their ability to bring high fashion to the masses.

At a star-studded blow-out party on Oct. 23 in New York City’s Financial District, H&M celebrated its latest collaboration with fashion brand Maison Martin Margiela, Women’s Wear Daily reported on Oct. 24. Party guests included Sarah Jessica Parker, Alan Cumming and Kanye West, and the evening’s atmosphere featured dance performances and sculptural installations. In addition, guests had the opportunity to shop the collection weeks in advance of its general release, according to the article.

H&M’s partnering with Maison Martin Margiela presents one of the company’s more innovative collaborations. Maison Martin Margiela is known for its avant-garde designs, and this collection upholds that reputation. The collection emphasizes rethinking conventional garments. For example, a jacket in the collection is designed to look like it’s made from a duvet. Another jacket is pieced together from several leather belts. In addition, many of the pieces are oversized, and a few dresses and jackets are split down the center between two styles with differing colors, hem lengths and trims.

Accessories round out the collection: oversized fanny-packs meant to be worn over the shoulder, necklaces with locks of hair as charms and clutch purses that look like candy bar wrappers. For footwear, Maison Martin Margiela designed hand-painted loafers and boots with acrylic glass heels that make the wearer look like she is walking on tiptoe.

“The H&M line is like ObamaCare, it gives more people more access to things normally available only to the very rich,” Alan Cumming said, according to an Oct. 25 New York Times blog post.

The collection’s prices are not unreasonable, but they are by no means in the spending range of penny-pinching college students. Jeans in the collection are $99, most dresses are over $100, and the more intricate outerwear is priced over $300, according to an Oct. 24 New York Magazine blog post.

I understand the value of well-made, well-designed clothes, so what bothers me is not so much the price of the collection, but its inaccessibility. I discovered just how hard to get H&M collaboration lines are when the company partnered with Versace in 2011. I hungrily perused pictures of the collection online before its release date. For weeks I envisioned getting my hands on a black T-shirt with studded Greek-key embellishments and one of the collection’s palm leaf-printed sweaters.

I later learned that only select cities would have the collection — Syracuse not among them — and that I would not be able to purchase the clothes online because H&M does not have e-commerce in the United States.

Undaunted, I resolved to drive to an H&M in Columbus, Ohio, from my hometown of Cleveland during Thanksgiving break. I had the foresight to call the store before making the five-hour round-trip journey, but was infuriated to learn that nothing but a few $300 leather-sleeved driving coats remained after the collection’s release-day shopping frenzy.

Needless to say, H&M collaboration collections remain out of my reach. Even for fashion fanatics in cities that get the collections, there is no guarantee of success. People often wait for hours in line, only to have pieces they want snatched away by equally obsessed shoppers. Clothes from popular collaboration collections also often appear on eBay for exorbitant sums days after they sell out in stores.

The Maison Martin Margiela for H&M line will be available in stores Nov. 15, according to the New York Times blog post. So if you’re traveling home early to a big city for Thanksgiving, there’s a chance you’ll be able to snag one of the collection’s avant-garde creations. And grab me a pair of the red-painted jeans while you’re at it.

The rest of us will be, once again, out of luck, waiting for H&M to live up to its claims of fashion for all.

Ian Simon-Curry is a junior public relations major. His column appears every other Monday. Follow him on Twitter at @incrediblyian. He can be reached at insimonc@syr.edu.

Published on October 29, 2012 at 2:58 am