Matthew Williamson, the young British designer christened the ‘king of boho chic’, has been named as the latest fashion talent to join forces with the Swedish high street chain, H&M.
Matthew Williamson who counts Sienna Miller, Keira Knightley, Kate Hudson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kylie Minoghue and Jade Jagger among his A-list clientele, will launch his first women’s wear collection for spring in H&M stores worldwide next April.
This will be followed a few weeks later by a further summer collection for women and his first-ever menswear range.
The Williamson ‘signing’ follows hot on the heels of H&M’s most recent, ‘cheap-chic’ fashion coup, the unprecedented collaboration with Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons, which premiered in stores earlier this month.
Williamson, who in addition to masterminding his own label recently stepped down from a three-year stint as creative director of the Florentine luxury brand, Emilio Pucci, is the second British designer to be lured by the mass market appeal of H&M.
The H&M collection by Beatles’ daughter, Stella McCartney, in 2005, was an instant sell-out.
Williamson, originally from Manchester and a graduate of London’s Central Saint Martin’s fashion college, has been showing at New York Fashion Week for several years and is one of the country’s most successful fashion “exports’’.
He has built up a huge following for his exuberant use of colour and print, which is aimed at the global traveller and often influenced by tribal, historical and hippy references such as Sante Fe, the Aztecs, Marrakesh or Woodstock.
Last year, he was honoured with a major exhibition at the Design Museum in London to mark the tenth anniversary of his starting his own label.
“I love the fact that H&M have created a new phenomenon in fashion through the pioneering concept of collaborating with high-end designers to create one-off, limited edition, capsule collections,” he said.
“Matthew has such a good eye and a way for working with prints that he mixes up in a new way. When he combines these things, you get a very contemporary London look,” said Margareta van den Bosch, H&M’s creative advisor.
For further information visit www.hm.com.
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