How collaborations at Uniqlo and M&S are saving the high street
Once upon a time, the high street was a cheap, cheerful and uncomplicated place where you could bag the latest trends and still have some money left for a takeaway. To paraphrase Ronseal, the high street did exactly what it said on the tin.
Fast forward to 2024, and we’re going to need a bigger tin – one large enough to fit all the required double billing. To say it’s been a stellar year for fashion collaborations is an understatement. Whatever your budget or taste, the high street has likely catered to it with aplomb. And the year is set to go out with a bang, too. On November 30, Zara will launch a collaboration with Kate Moss – the supermodel’s first since her fabled Kate Moss x Topshop partnership that ran for three years, causing a stampede on its 2007 launch day and blessing many a wardrobe with its munificence. At 50, Moss’s personal style is as compelling as ever, and fans can expect her Zara collection to borrow from her own wardrobe in the same seductive way as did her Topshop partnership.
Thanks to a combination of seductive marketing, controlled scarcity and competitive pricing, never have shoppers had to move faster in snaring their prey. The most successful collaborations of the year, such as Uniqlo x Anya Hindmarch, or M&S x Bella Freud, sold out with dizzying rapidity. Which is what happens when a trusted high street brand partners with a designer whose prices had previously been out of the reach of most.
When an Anya Hindmarch canvas tote starts at £225 and a leather handbag costs £1,200, the opportunity to own a merino wool jumper for £34.90 is too good to resist – particularly when it’s of the quality for which Uniqlo is renowned. “I’ve loved collaborating with Uniqlo again, working with their iconic knits and outerwear,” says Hindmarch. “Once again, we’ve played with their silhouettes; deconstructing and then rebuilding them with unexpected details, always with a touch of fun.” The collection sold out within hours.
The UK might be in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, but this doesn’t seem to preclude designer x high street collaborations being a licence to print money. Even Gap, for years in the doldrums, reported 1.5-2 per cent sales rise last week, leading to shares climbing by 8 per cent. It’s a slow recovery rather than a stratospheric success – but it’s notable that the way it’s made itself relevant again is via some clever collaborations. When the respected but lesser known designer Zac Posen was appointed as Gap’s chief creative officer earlier this year, many were sceptical that he had the necessary business nous to turn around the ailing US brand. But buzzy partnerships with niche labels such as Dôen, Cult Gaia and LoveShackFancy generated a lot of interest, driving younger customers into stores again.
As for what alchemy makes a great collaboration, it’s hard to define – but you’ll know it when you see it. According to Sara McCorquodale, the founder of influencer marketing agency, Corq, the most effective collaborations clearly represent the aspirations of the brand’s target customer. “You need to work with a personality or a designer that embodies this aspiration.” Nor is it simply about bringing high fashion to the masses at an affordable price. “In an age of dupes and fast production, success is not necessarily about price point,” notes McCorquodale. “While bringing a luxury name to the high street for high street money is compelling, that name still has to stand for something that is culturally or aesthetically unique and desirable.”
This is particularly important in 2024, when competition on the high street has never been fiercer, nor have customers ever been more spoilt. They’re also likely to be rather jaded, given that high fashion x high street collaborations have around for more than 40 years. The first one dates back to 1983, when JC Penney launched a range with the fêted New York designer, Halston. While it propelled his name into the mainstream, he was also accused of diluting it, with some upscale department stores even refusing to carry his main line (catwalk) collection, believing its worth to be diminished.
It took ten more years for the British high street to enter the chat. In 1993, Debenhams led the way by launching Designers at Debenhams, inviting Jasper Conran to create the diffusion line, “J”. Designers including John Rocha, Julien Macdonald and Matthew Williamson followed suit, each of them, like Conran, entering into long-term arrangements that increased their profile, while simultaneously helping fund their catwalk shows. British designers have long had to be creative in finding means of financing their businesses. But even in the Nineties, snobbery abounded, with some looked down upon for “sullying” their brand.
This all changed in 2004, when H&M banished any snobbery overnight by signing up Karl Lagerfeld, then at Chanel, to design a collection. Global hysteria ensued, not least because prices weren’t much higher than H&M’s usual remit. If Lagerfeld could do high street without damaging his brand, so, reasoned Stella McCartney, Isobel Marant, Versace, Balmain, Lanvin, Moschino and Margiela, could they. When even the cerebral, self-effacing Rei Kawakubo designs a collection for H&M (2008), you know the game has changed forever (to celebrate its 20th anniversary, the Swedish retailer released some of its most popular collections by partnering with global vintage retailers to resell them).
In 2024, the game has also been raised. For Virginia Norris, the co-founder of PR agency Aisle 8, the most successful collaborations have highly recognisable products at their core, combined with an element of surprise. “It can be a combination of much-loved brands which can come from very different worlds, but ultimately, those worlds need to collide successfully,” says Norris, who worked on Mango’s recent partnership with Victoria Beckham. “Ideally, they’d also extend each brand’s world and reach. Successful collaborations reach multiple communities and demographics. For example, John Lewis x A.W.A.K.E Mode produced the most beautiful tailoring, while M&S x Bella Freud gave people access to the sweater they’d always wanted but couldn’t pay for the designer price tag.”
As two of the British high street’s biggest and best-loved stalwarts, John Lewis and M&S surprised many customers by entering into these unexpected partnerships. Launched by Natalia Alaverdian in 2012, it’s fair to say that A.W.A.K.E Mode is an under-the-radar brand, and not an obvious fit for John Lewis. Likewise Bella Freud, who, while better known, was still a fairly left-field choice for M&S, not least because the collection dropped shortly after its high-profile collaboration with Sienna Miller.
While a super-stylish Hollywood actress like Miller will always be in demand, more retailers are thinking outside the box. For Monsoon, this meant collaborating with the influencer Sarah Corbett-Winder – not a well-known name, but one whose “cool girl” style was deemed the perfect fit for Monsoon’s party collection. “Sarah is a unique voice in the social creator world – innovative, and with a dedicated, stylish audience that we wanted to reach,” says Monsoon’s design director, Caroline Jackson. “We predicted that her audience would love the chance to find a ready-to-wear capsule collection bearing her hallmarks. Meanwhile, our audience loved discovering Sarah and her content, too.”
While it might seem as if the lesser-known name has everything to gain and the retailer has everything to lose, according to Sara McCorquodale, “collaborations are a bigger risk for independent talents or designers. If they don’t result in what their audience wants, they have to face an immediate takedown on social media, often single-handedly. You wouldn’t believe how quickly an audience turns into a mob when they feel let down by a commercial partnership. Accusations of selling out can haunt influencers online for years.”
When the collaboration results in well-received and covetable products, McCorquodale reckons that the retailer benefits more than the celebrity or influencer lending their name – particularly if they are using the partnership as a shortcut to global brand positioning. “The Barbour x Alexa Chung collection would have played well with the US and Asian millennial female consumer who sees her as an arbiter of cool British style, while also aligning with the brand’s core UK audience,” she explains. “The brand got mass reach and a collection that made sense in multiple contexts.”
Perhaps the best collaborations should be likened to a marriage. Both partners have to be compatible, and while they thrive on their own, together, they create a magic that somehow contrives to be greater than the sum of their parts. With luxury brands now priced well out of the reach of all but a few, demand for well-designed, responsibly manufactured and affordable clothes has never been higher. Here’s to more exciting unions in 2025.
