H&M announces latest designer collaboration will be in partnership with Mugler

Find yourself in the market for one of those striped bodysuits worn by Dua Lipa and Lizzo over the last year but don’t want to shell out the required £800?

Well, maybe you’re finally in luck, because H&M has announced its latest designer collaboration, and it’s none other than fashion house Mugler.

Mugler is currently led by Creative Director Casey Cadwallader (aka the brains behind all those viral cut-out catsuits), who has pledged to showcase “powerful modern femininity” in his collections for the brand.

And now he’s bringing that powerful modern femininity to the masses by teaming up with Ann-Sofie Johansson, Creative Advisor at H&M, to create a capsule collection that blends high-end with high street, in stores and spring 2023 will be available online.

H&M has worked with major brands such as Moschino, Roberto Cavalli, Karl Lagerfeld and Stella McCartney, as well as fashion houses Balmain, Versace and Comme des Garçons.

The Lagerfeld collaboration, launched in 2004, was so successful it sold out in stores within hours (this was 2004, remember, it wasn’t the heyday of the internet, you had to go there in person).

A year later, the partnership with Stella McCartney attracted the same interest. Queues of up to 800 people formed outside H&M stores, and sellers praying for quieter scenes than the Lagerfeld launch were sorely disappointed. “We thought it would be quieter than the Karl Lagerfeld line. We were wrong,” an H&M employee told WWD at the time.

H&M’s more recent collaborations have also drawn crowds – the 2015 collaboration between H&M and Balmain, for example, rode at the peak of Balmain’s popularity wave and became its most popular collection to date. “Interest in this launch has surpassed all previous collaborations, both in-store and online,” Hacan Andersson, an H&M representative, told Bloomberg in 2015.

Other collabs, like those with Kenzo and Erdem in 2016 and 2017, haven’t fared as well, but things usually pick up speed when a big name emerges (Moschino’s 2018 H&M collection was so popular the site crashed ).

All in all, Mugler’s merger with the high street giant is set to be just as big as its predecessors, especially with his recent crop of viral styles. But who knows, these Dua Lipa bodysuits might not translate