Maybe greater than another particular person within the whirling sphere of style, Margareta van den Bosch catapulted high-low dressing.
As H&M’s first design director, she led the Swedish chain’s collaborations with main designers beginning with Karl Lagerfeld in 2004. However even in retirement, when many could be basking of their accomplishments, van den Bosch prefers to share the highlight with the various co-workers that helped to speed up design at H&M. The just-out e book “Workforce Maggan: H&M’s First Design Director and Coworkers on Trend, Folks and Prospects” takes a large view of that with private testimonies that present the range of roles, features and processes at play.
Throughout an interview on the Soho Grand Resort in New York Friday, van den Bosch, who is named “Maggan,” spoke of the present state of style two years after she stepped away from working. Whereas stay style exhibits are a plus, she famous how there are extra influencers than journalists attending the runway exhibits. “It’s a brand new world. You simply have to simply accept it,” she mentioned. “It’s extra accessible. Folks most likely favor it like this.”
Requested if the accessibility of style elevated consumption, van den Bosch mentioned, “Accessibility may be inspiration for everyone as an alternative of all people in the identical look. Extra individuals are inquisitive about style than ever earlier than. Earlier than, it was extra of 1 group.”
The e book’s writer and former H&M staffer Catarina Midby famous how people can select their very own style inspiration, versus having traits dictated by editors or anybody. And youthful customers are massive on resale, typically shopping for clothes that they’ll put on for a stretch after which promote on-line. “It’s not like earlier than once you purchased a coat and wore it till it fell aside,” Midby mentioned. “It’s totally different.”
Home resale is anticipated to extend from greater than $200 billion to an estimated $306.5 billion — a 34 p.c achieve — by the top of this decade, in accordance with the 2025 Recommerce Report by OfferUp in partnership with information analytics agency GlobalData. Gen Z helps to spice up these figures.
Recalling how when van den Bosch completed at Beckmans Faculty of Design round 1965, the main target was on particular skirt lengths, and he or she praised how the truth that designers may be extra free results in extra novelty. From her viewpoint, males’s style is extra thrilling. A lot so, that she actually enjoys the boys’s exhibits with Dior’s final go-round being a favourite. Carrying striped black observe pants and an outsized blue buttoned-down shirt with a colourful silk scarf, she mentioned, “I additionally like to decorate a bit of extra masculine. I like males’s garments.”
The pair visited “Superfine: Tailoring Black Fashion” on the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork and so they left impressed. Van den Bosch hopes that the exhibition will encourage folks and likewise immediate extra exhibitions alongside these traces. Though some males may take longer to adapt to style, she mentioned you possibly can see how younger males are into style. “We should always discover extra about males’s style and encourage them to be extra daring by way of every thing — media and exhibitions. Folks like style exhibitions. They’re very fashionable,” she mentioned.
Midby added, “they’re one thing that everybody can perceive in tradition, however it additionally will depend on the way you make them. This one at [The Met] was clearly tremendous good.”
Whereas working as a style editor at Damernas Värld earlier than becoming a member of H&M, Midby approached the corporate to tell them that the journal needed to honor van den Bosch as “designer of the 12 months.” She mentioned, “That was a bit of bit avant garde on the time, as a result of H&M was like a giant excessive avenue firm and usually we give the design award to a designer. Margareta mentioned, ‘Oh thanks a lot, however it’s not simply me. This complete staff has made this assortment collectively,” Midby mentioned.
In 2001, H&M staged a runway present with 40 of the world’s high fashions together with Grace Jones, who opened and closed it in entrance of a crowd of 550 members of the media in Dalhalla, Sweden.
Within the full fiscal 12 months ended Nov. 30, 2024, gross sales fell 1 p.c to 234.48 billion kronor, or $21.33 billion, whereas in native currencies they elevated by 1 p.c, with round 30 p.c of transactions happening on-line.
Though van den Bosch didn’t share Midby’s keenness in a biography about her life, as soon as she retired from H&M, Midby felt that the timing was prime to do one thing. The writer advised that the premise wouldn’t simply be about van den Bosch, but additionally the artistic staff and the visitor designers that H&M has labored with. “That was the best way to make M comply with do it,” she mentioned.
“Many individuals had requested me to do a biography and I mentioned no. Additionally, we had labored collectively so we had a really good relationship. She knew every thing so we wouldn’t have to start out at first. It’s not solely the designers, however the advertising folks and different artistic folks. All of us labored collectively,” van den Bosch mentioned.
