Fashion group H&M will release a new brand next year: Nyden. Designed in Los Angeles, with the help of influencers. It is a brand that wants to discern itself through co-creation, limited edition and slightly elevated prices.
Fashion for the different millennial tribes
Oscar Olsson, who currently leads H&M Group’s innovation lab, will lead Nyden. The designs will be created in Los Angeles, but will be heavily influenced by influencers and data. Olsson targets the “netocrat” as his audience: credibility, authenticity and personality are extremely important to millennials, but they are also very sensitive about exploitation, of themselves and others.
The launch of another H&M subsidiary is part of the Swedish group’s new philosophy, focused on how fashion will cater to different “tribes” of consumers in the future. Every tribe will decide what they want to wear and will not be told by famous people what to wear. That is also why Nyden will not be led by a single designer, but follow a path of co-creation with “tribal leaders” (or “influencers”). The brand also wants to draw insights from data and has also appointed an in-house philosopher, author Alexander Bard.
Reverse top-down
According to the creative founder, Olsson, the goal is to reverse the fashion industry’s traditional top-down model. “In this future society, as any brand or any kind of provider of anything, you need to embrace the fact that the power is not in your hands,” he told trade paper The Cut. “The power has shifted to what we call tribes.” He also managed to attract several “tribal leaders”, like Instagram star Doctor Woo and Swedish actress Noomi Rapace.
Influencers will be invited to the brand’s Los Angeles design center, where they will gain access to a selected range of fabrics and materials. Collections can be created in a four-week period and be sold online or at virtual and physical pop-up events. Olsson emphasized that Nyden will not be a traditional fast-fashion brand, but will consist of limited (capsule) collections, priced at a slightly elevated level.
