…by hiring the streetwear designer Heron Preston

Heron Preston at New York Fashion Week last February. Photo: heronpreston/Instagram

H&M has just announced not a mere collaboration, but a permanent creative arrangement. The Swedish brand has appointed the American streetwear designer Heron Preston as their “creative menswear advisor”, and together, the fast fashion label is hoping to fine-tune its menswear offering. Mr Preston is known for his own eponymous line, a proud amalgamation of styles that reflect the Black preference for mixing-and-seeing-what-happens. Or, what one of the brand’s stockist, Selfridge’s, call “a blend of aesthetics, combining utilitarian elements with bold graphics and logos.” That does not exactly pinpoint Mr Preston’s particular look, but for his fans and followers, that is his precise appeal. The chin chye (凊彩 or anything will do in Hokkien) approach means there is no need to subscribe to one style. When fashion today is wildly mutable, Mr Preston’s unabashedly American pastiche are thought to be in sync. There is breadth, if not charm, in what he does. Perhaps, that is his appeal to H&M too.

For a few years now (going back to before the COVID pandemic), we have noticed that the H&M collection for men have leaned on the side of the lacklustre, save those conceived in collaboration with buzzy designers. Even at the height of the season, the men’s zone at their flagship on Grange Road looks especially starved of vitality. Now that H&M Home has opened, it looks even more famished. Mr Preston’s appointment may suggest that H&M is well aware of the brand’s weak menswear output, especially when sibling label COS’s is innumerable rungs above the former. The menswear market was valued at US$575.1 billion in 2022, and is projected to hit US$610.75 billion this year, according to Market Research Future. We do not know the size of H&M’s menswear business in the global pie, but it is possible that, given the favourable future of menswear, they’d want a bigger slice. And they think Heron Preston is the guy to help them gain it.

Heron Preston autumn/winter 2023. Images: gorunway.com. Illustration: Just So

A known designer as permanent creative head at a popular label is not unusual, or new. Uniqlo leads in this respect. In 2016, the Japanese brand named Christophe Lemaire as lead of a new project, the Uniqlo Paris R&D centre, and the resultant label Uniqlo U. This is not a collaboration in the traditional sense (although Mr Lemaire did pair with Uniqlo previously, turning out two collections); this saw the French designer as a Uniqlo staffer, with a team that puts out two major seasons a year. The clothes mostly push Uniqlo basics into less safe territory, and are distinguished by small, sometimes unnoticeable details, as well as colours that are less cheerful than the typical Uniqlo palette, but not less compelling. Up till now, seven years after Uniqlo U was launched, the line continues to offer pieces that captivate due to their wearability and above-the-ordinary refinement, with a Japanese knack for the intriguingly technical.

We do not know as yet what H&M wishes Heron Preston to do with their men’s line. In all likelihood, it won’t be the less-trodden path Uniqlo U took. These days many European labels across the price spectrum prefer a male American designer with a Black perspective to offer input to their brand, especially in the area of menswear. And it isn’t just any creative. He has to be a multi-hyphenate, preferably someone with street cred and connections to the world of hip-hop. Some consider this the post-Virgil-Abloh effect. Mr Preston has the credentials to entice H&M. Unlike Mr Abloh and his successor at Louis Vuitton, Pharrell Williams, Mr Preston went to fashion school—at Parsons School of Design in New York. However, like the other two, the San Francisco-born moves among hip-hop’s elite, even at one time working with he who recently bared his bum Kanye West. H&M found their guy. We happily wait for the outcome.