Exclusivity or not?

Federico Martínez, a friend of mine and creator of Un proyecto llamado 365, ask me a question on Twitter and this gave me an idea for an entry. He was asking me what I think about designers going massive and selling low priced designs for Target, he asked me about Zac Posen's.

I remember when I first heard that Stella McCartney was doing a collection for H&M back in 2005. I didn't know much about collaborations, but I find out that Karl Lagerfeld had already made one and it was a huge hit. After that came other designers, collaborating not only for H&M, but also for Target and Adidas and some other brands. Some of them are: Rodarte, Comme des Garçons, Viktor & Rolf, Zac Posen, Alexander McQueen... And others, who are not designers like Madonna and Kylie Minogue. Soon Narciso Rodríguez will be designing an exclusive collection for Ebay.

But the thing here is how this makes designer clothes not exclusive, that's what Fede's wondering. I have a different point of view here. Designers have their brands and they give all for their own collections, the best materials, best finishings, luxe, exclusivity. Let's take McQueen's example. If you see his Spring 2010 collection who will see the amount of work in every piece, starting with the armadillo shoes and followed by other like the craftmanship in the dresses, where you can see the uniqueness of the print, the quality of the fabric and th embellishment. That's why a McQueen dress costs more than $3500. But McQ for Target was a whole different thing. It has the McQueen signature, but he didn't use brocades or silk, material were more like cotton and polyester.

I don't think that creating a low price collection for any of this brands affects the exclusivity of the designers work. We can compare them because they were designed by the same designer, but they are different. Like I said, materials change, the structure, cuts, embellishments, quantity, etc. This massive collections give the opportunity to fashion lovers to acquire things that if they were not from "McQueen for Target" or "Karl Lagerfeld for H&M", they could never have. It makes high end brands accesible for people who doesn't have $6000 dollars to spend on an ourfit. Has a lower tag price, but has the designer signatuire.

At the same time this collections give the designer an opportunity to sell his/her designs to a different market, in different locations and worldwide (in many cases). So I see it as a great marketing opportunity, people will know about the designer and it will create a new perspective on customers. It makes fashion more accesible and it also helps designers in this rough time that we are going through.

Hope I made myself clear, Fede...

Here I chose some pictures from designer with low price collections.

Rodarte for Target

Karl Lagerfeld for H&M


Zac Posen for Target


Alexander McQueen for Target


Comme des Garçons for H&M


Viktor & Rolf for H&M