In November 2004, Karl Lagerfeld, the designer behind Chanel, put his name on clothes at H&M. Karl Lagerfeld, for a price you could actually pay, back then was revolutionary.
It was the first time a designer that big had come down to the silver rack. In Paris, it sold out in about thirty minutes. Most stores sold out within the hour.
Lagerfeld wasn’t happy.
The whole idea was “designer clothes for everyone”. But H&M made so few pieces that most women never got one. The thing that was supposed to end fashion snobbery turned into it. He called it “snobbery created by anti-snobbery.”
I wish I could tell you I got one of those pieces. It was one of the first collaborations of this century that let a woman put on a designer’s blazer at an H&M price and feel possibility.
A fifty dollar blazer that makes you feel unstoppable is worth more than a four hundred dollar one that makes you feel like you’re wearing someone else’s life.
What’s the least you ever paid for something that made you feel unstoppable?
