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  • Olivia Wilde to Promote H&M’s “Conscious Exclusive” Collection

    Olivia Wilde is the new brand ambassador for H&M’s Conscious Exclusive fashion collection. The Swedish clothing retailer announced today that Wilde will be the face of the Conscious Exclusive campaign, one of the company’s initiatives for what it dubs sustainable fashion.

    “Sustainability is one of my biggest passions,” said Wilde. “I’m proud to be the face of H&M Conscious Exclusive, a collection which shows the stylishness of sustainability.”

    Wilde is an actress famous for her role on the TV show House M.D. and for starring in movies such as TRON: Legacy.

    The Conscious Exclusive collection is part of what H&M is calling its long-term commitment to sustainable fashion. The company bases its H&M Conscious initiative on seven commitments including being ethical, recycling, using natural resources responsibly, and rewarding responsible partners.

    As part of the announcement, H&M revealed a bit about the upcoming Conscious Exclusive collection. The company stated that the new collection is focused on dresses and hand-drawn prints. The collection has also taken inspiration from African, Indian, and Asian cultures.

    “I love the look of this year’s Conscious Exclusive collection,” said Ann-Sofie Johansson, head of design for H&M’s New Development department. “The pieces are full of character with the most beautiful prints, all made from more sustainable materials.”

    The new Conscious Exclusive collection will be available in H&M stores and online starting April 15, 2015.

    Wilde is well-known for her political activism as well as her support of environmental and humanitarian causes. She is a board member for both Artists for Peace and Justice and the ACLU of Southern California. She has participated in campaigns for President Obama, U.S. healthcare reform, and a variety of human rights issues.

    Wilde also has specific ties to sustainable fashion. The actress is a co-founder of Conscious Commerce, an organization that encourages retailers to market themselves through philanthropic fundraising.

  • Gisele Bundchen is Once Again World’s Richest Model

    When Forbes released its first-ever Celebrity 100 list in 1999, only five models made the list – Claudia Schiffer, Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, Niki Taylor and Kate Moss. When Forbes released its highest-earning models of 2014 list yesterday, only Kate Moss remained on the list. Aside from Moss, there was also another constant on the list – Gisele Bundchen.

    Bundchen topped Forbes’s list of highest-paid models for the eighth consecutive year. This year alone, Bundchen made $47 million – $5 million more than she made in 2013. The rest of the top five was filled by Doutzen Kroes ($8 million), Adriana Lima ($8 million), Kate Moss ($7 million and the oldest model on the list at age 40), and Kate Upton ($7 million and the highest-ranked newcomer to the list in 2014).

    Bundchen’s fortune was aided through her multiple advertising deals with multiple companies, including H&M, Chanel, Carolina Herrera, Balenciaga, Isabel Marant, and Stuart Weitzman. Bundchen also recently signed a deal with shoemaker Grendene to get a portion of the profits the company receives from sales on a jelly sandal she helped the company design. All in all, Bundchen has made $386 million since she began her modeling career in 2001.

    Despite what Forbes publishes as her earning, Bundchen insists that she does not make what the publication lists:

    It’s sad, because these people who write [the list] do not have my account number! I earn well, but it is not all this talking. I have been audited in the U.S. because of the Forbes list. And frankly, whether or not I’m in this ranking, I do not care.

    If Bundchen does not care about her rating as the highest-paid model, perhaps she does care about her ranking in another of Forbes’s lists, the World’s Most Powerful Celebrities. In this year’s list, Bundchen ranked 56th – the highest of any model by far.

    Perhaps the most surprising piece of information, however, pertains to Bundchen’s husband, Tom Brady. This year, Brady made an estimated $31.3 million – a whopping $15.7 million less than his wife.

  • Alexander Wang And H&M Establish Partnership

    The store H&M has always been known for offering inexpensive, yet stylish fashion apparel for those who like a little hipness in their clothing, so when Margareta van den Bosch, H&M’s creative advisor, announced the store will be partnering with famed fashion designer Alexander Wang, die hard customers of the store probably jumped for joy.

    Wang started to get noticed around 2007 when he put together his first New York City fashion show to stellar reviews, and today, his slick urban styled clothing are in stores all around the globe, including places like Neiman Marcus, Browns, and Bergdorf Goodman.

    Van den Bosch said H&M decided to work with Wang because his clothes have a certain versatility to them, and they can be worn by people of all ages.

    “We’ve always liked Alexander’s designs. He’s very contemporary,” she said. “It’s very young, but it’s also things that can be worn by any age because of his influences in tailoring and sport. He’s very much today.”

    Although the 30-year-old San Francisco native is keeping his H&M designs under wraps until release, he wants to bring something new to the designer and clothing store pairing, since that type of collaboration has been done so many times.

    “The idea of collaboration isn’t new anymore, they’ve been done from all angles,” said Wang. “When they approached me, I wanted to do something different. It will be a new take on a lifestyle offering. It’s a little early [to discuss it], but it’s a completely new take on how they do collaborations.”

    In addition, Wang said that H&M is the ideal store to design for, since the chain has no problem going outside of the box to please its customers, and he’s excited the store will provide him with an even wider audience.

    “I am very honored to be a part of H&M’s designer collaborations,” he said. “The work with their team is an exciting fun process. They are very open to pushing boundries and to setting a platform for creativity. This will be a great way for a wider audience to experience elements of the Alexander Wang brand and lifestyle.”

    Image via YouTube

  • Wedding Dresses at H&M for $99 Set Internet Abuzz

    H&M has recently launched a $99 wedding dress. Images of the dress have taken the internet fashion sites and blogs by a storm.

    Back in 2006, the company launched another affordable wedding dress for $349 with its Viktor & Rolf Collection, according to MTV. H&M spokesperson Jennifer Uglialoro had said that the pricing and release “was very strategic”. “Within the first hour, all of our 25 wedding dresses were sold out”, she added, noting that there were only 1,000 dresses total.

    This latest affordable dress, set to be mass produced, further reduces the price by over a third. Buzzfeed compared the dress Target’s Tevlio line for a $99 and J.C. Penney’s own $64.99 wedding gown. But H&M has dominated the Twitter discussion:

    According to the Daily Mail, a spokesman of the company said “We have been offering party dresses for quite some time and we felt that we wanted to be able to give our customer an opportunity to look great on her wedding day by offering this great and affordable wedding dress in our assortment. Everyone should be able to have a great and affordable wedding dress.”

    According to the Association of Bridal Consultants, the average wedding costs $28,082, with the average dress costing $1,600. Veronica Guerrieri, economist for the University of Chicago told NPR she attributes a bride’s willingness to pay to the rising cost: “I think that on average there is a lot of status and signaling going on wedding day.”

    It will remain to be seen whether the trend will reduce the cost of weddings or status and signaling will prevail. H&M’s dress is expected to go up for sale online later this month.

    Image via H&M, Facebook

  • Skimpy Beckham Ad Stirs Up The Web

    David Beckham isn’t shy about showing us his body–a fact most of us are grateful for–and he’s got a new H&M ad out to prove it.

    Beckham, who has a knack for clothing design like his wife Victoria, partnered with H&M last year for a line of underwear and sleepwear. Since then, he’s released a couple of ab-baring ads that give us a glimpse at just what soccer will do for a body. The latest photos come courtesy of a commercial that looks more like a short film, wherein Beckham takes on the role of an action hero and saves the day, all while in his underwear. Here’s a sneak peak of the ad, which was directed by Guy Ritchie.

    Beckham says he always enjoys the look of the ads because of the quality, but he will never get used to seeing himself in them.

    “No matter how many campaigns I do with H&M, I will never get used to seeing myself on billboards,” he said. “It’s always a surprise to me when I see them. I’m lucky to work with such great photographers and stylists, so the images are always the best they can be.”

    Here’s a photo from the last run of ads:

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    And here are some new ones:

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  • Luxury Brands Have Highest Google+ Brand Engagement

    Google+ users apparently have some champagne tastes. A new survey from Simply Measured, a social media analytics firm, reveals that luxury brands like Ferrari, GUCCI, and Burberry rank the among highest among the Interbrand Top 100 brands on Google+ when it comes to consumer engagement.

    These types of surveys show that not every big brand is diving in head first to the Google+ pool as only 64% of the Interbrand 100 even have Google+ brand pages. Nike and Xerox, which are household names of brands if there ever were one, just launched their respective Google+ pages this past quarter. One of the reasons that more brands may begin to gravitate to Google+ is because, whether people like it or not, Google is trying to wrangle in as many people as possible, therefore increasing the size of the consumer pool that brands can have access to. For example, in the previous quarter, there was a 138% increase in circles across all pages, which Simply Measured says indicates that brands are becoming more active while consumers continue to get comfortable with the environs of Google+.

    For some reason, Google+ is the place to go if you’re in the automotive industry. By wide lengths, automotive bands blow away all other industries in a comparison of Google+ circle size. Ferrari alone is listed in 730,831 Google Circles (it’s actually gone up to 746,345 since this study was polished and sent out), which is more than what most other industries have combined.

    Ferrari has figured out some magic formula for social media engagement. The company’s presence on Google+ is indisputably dominant, and over on Facebook it’s not doing too shabby, either. In fact, the top five brands in terms of number of fans are all automobile brands (Ferrari ranks #2 among them). If that’s any indication, then every industry should figure out what strange psychological hook automotive companies have in our collective conscience and take notes because obviously it’s got a powerful tug to it.

    Simply Measured CEO Adam Schoenfeld expects that as Google+ continues to grow, more brands will adopt to the social network as a means to engage consumers. “Based on this most recent quarter, luxury and automotive brands are clearly finding Google+ to be an effective way to connect with consumers,” he said. “It will be interesting to watch the data unfold as we near the one-year anniversary of the platform.”

    <a href=Google+ Top Consumer Brands” src=”http://cdn.ientry.com/sites/webpronews/article_pics/googleplustopbrands.png” title=”Google+ Top Consumer Brands” class=”aligncenter” width=”616″ height=”288″ />

    Top Industries on <a href=Google+” src=”http://cdn.ientry.com/sites/webpronews/article_pics/topcircles.png” title=”Top Industries on Google+” class=”aligncenter” width=”100%” />

    Concerning the first table, you’ll see that Google ranks as the #10 brand when it comes to the Circle tally. That almost seems a little unfair because of course Google, with its legion of Google+ accounts, would be among the highest brands, never mind the fact that Google+ is a Google enterprise.

    I digress. However, speaking of Google’s appearance on that list, here’s a funny bit of trivia: even though Google has a bazillion Google+ accounts for its bazillion services, impossibly, H&M managed to out-post Google by quite a margin. In other words, H&M is on an all-out onslaught across Google+ to get their user engagement up, which appears to be a successful strategy given the company’s high ranking.

    Top <a href=Google+ Brands by Posts” src=”http://cdn.ientry.com/sites/webpronews/article_pics/hmblast.png” title=”Top Google+ Brands by Posts” class=”aligncenter” width=”555″ height=”541″ />

    H&M: keeping you fashionable for less on Google+.

    Here’s the full chart of the brands included in Simply Measured’s survey.

    Google+ Top Brand Pages” class=”aligncenter” width=”100%” />