The red carpet in the first Elie Saab H&M campaign image has been laid across an ordinary Paris street, and that is the whole point. No velvet rope. No bouncer. No seating chart. A model in a black strapless gown with an oversized bow and a sweeping train strides down it in broad daylight, and the message could not be clearer: the house that dresses the most guarded nights in fashion has decided to stop guarding them.
H&M said last week that Elie Saab will be its next designer collaborator, with the collection landing Oct. 22 in selected stores worldwide and online. The pairing took years to feel right. Saab, who founded his label in Beirut in 1982 and grew from a master of bridalwear into one of the first international members of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, has never chased trends. When he finally said yes, he set the terms himself. “We wanted to be sure we could do something where every piece was special, without compromise,” he said, “because otherwise it wouldn’t be Elie Saab. No one wants ‘basic’ from Elie Saab.”
Nothing about the 55-piece lineup reads basic. The collection reprises the house signatures that have made Saab a red-carpet fixture for Zendaya, Eva Longoria and Bella Hadid: gradient sequins that melt from gold to black, lace embroidery, monogrammed details, faux fur. The palette is a restrained midnight mix of black, gold and emerald green, running from a black bustier dress in recycled polyester duchesse to a chocolate leather funnel-neck jacket with a matching pencil skirt. The collection includes gowns, shimmering separates, and sharply tailored coats, plus daywear and embellished knitwear for the hours before the party starts. The collection also includes menswear and men’s accessories, a first for a designer whose focus has been womenswear, alongside earrings, jacquard scarves, flat slingbacks and towering platforms.
The translation from couture to commerce was not automatic. H&M’s creative adviser and head of womenswear design, Ann-Sofie Johansson, recalled watching Saab pick up a single piece of black fabric in the studio and twist, turn and drape it into a bustier dress on a mannequin. “It was really intriguing,” she said. “After that, it was up to us to try to work out how he did it and to get it right. It’s harder than it looks.” Her pattern makers reverse-engineered the bow and the small handle on the train, and the team pushed materials that hadn’t existed even a few years ago. Some pieces, such as the faux fur jacket, would not have been possible before H&M’s Balmain collaboration in 2015, which showed the company how far its own manufacturing could be pushed.
For Johansson, the match was personal before it was strategic. “Mr. Saab has been making beautiful clothes for years now,” she said, “but it felt like maybe he hasn’t been celebrated enough.” At a moment when machine-made content dominates the conversation, she added that what people want is “just to experience something beautiful,” to own a piece of a world built by hand. That world, Elie Saab Jr., vice chairman and CEO of the group, said, has grown about 35 percent a year while staying true to its DNA. The collaboration, he said, was about translating that essence for a new audience. “Who better to do that with than H&M?”
The timing is deliberate. An October release lands the collection squarely ahead of holiday party season, when occasionwear becomes the whole story. For H&M, which has run its designer program since Karl Lagerfeld in 2004 and welcomed back Stella McCartney earlier this year, the house brings an occasion-led proposition the retailer can build an entire season around. For shoppers, it closes a gap that has always felt unreachable, the one between the gown on the red carpet and the rack down the street.
For nearly four decades, the way into Elie Saab’s world has run through a red carpet. In October, H&M rolls that carpet out onto the street, and this time nobody is checking the guest list.
Images courtesy of H&M
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