With a three-part fashion show featuring Brooklyn Beckham supermodels Alex Consani and Paloma Elsesser; a panel talk series curated by Katie Grand; a mini-concert from star of the moment Lola Young; and a late-night party DJ’ed by Honey Dijon, on Thursday at 180 Strand, H&M kicked off London fashion week with a bang. Entitled H&M&180:The London Issue, the event — which was also open to the public via a free ticket ballot — was the next edition in a sweep of major activations for the high street retailer, which is aiming to boost its fashion credentials and cultural resonance with today’s consumer, amid a challenging retail climate.
“We always want to create something surprising,” says Jörgen Andersson, chief creative officer of the brand since 2023, speaking on Zoom from Stockholm three days out from the event. “For this event, we wanted to spotlight our product with a runway show, but then spice it up with other events around it.”
Thursday’s event, curated by Perfect Magazine founder and stylist Grand, began with panel talks and workshops for the public yesterday afternoon. The panel talks — moderated by designer and Perfect Magazine fashion director Edward Buchanan — focused on new media and education, with Andersson and BFC CEO Laura Weir alongside big names including model Amelia Gray, blogger and influencer Susie Lau, and photographer Aidan Zamiri, known for his work with Charli XCX. After, Grand led a “living magazine” workshop, showing members of the public in real time how a shoot comes together.
The day culminated in the runway show — the brand’s first since 2018 — which featured the Autumn/Winter 2025 main collection, plus pieces from the premium H&M Studio and H&M men’s atelier collections. Pieces will be available to buy in two drops, the first released on Friday and the second on 2 October. The show element to help stoke demand, Andersson says, and underlines H&M’s ambitions to be known for fashion, after several more cultural marketing moments designed to boost brand perception. “Our design team has been working super hard, so we wanted to put the spotlight on the fashion and the design efforts that we have done this time,” Andersson says.
“London is the epicentre of pop culture and fashion and music, the scene we want to be part of,” says Andersson. “We started here with Charli XCX [in September 2024] and now we’re returning with a different concept.”
H&M has been busy since it hosted a 2,000-person Charli XCX concert in London’s Copper Box Arena. It followed that blockbuster moment with a series of music events: a concert in New York, a festival in LA before Coachella with Doechii, and another festival in São Paolo, to celebrate the launch of H&M in Brazil with Tyla, Anitta and Gilberto Gil. While each was a unique concept, the premise is similar: big crowds, plenty of public tickets, top-tier music performances, and curated food and drinks.
The event strategy is long-term, Andersson says. But the retailer is likely hoping it will help turn the tide in a challenging macroeconomic environment. H&M reported a 53 per cent drop in profit in the second quarter of 2025, due to recent store closures and financial pressure on its core consumer. The mass-market shopper is increasingly price sensitive, driving them away from the high street to ultra-fast fashion platforms like Shein, H&M’s biggest competitor, group CEO Daniel Ervér acknowledged last year. At the same time, the high street has partly turned its attention to the aspirational luxury consumer, who has pulled back luxury spending, seeking more affordable options.
In response, high street players like H&M and stablemate Cos have made efforts to “premiumise” their brands and raise their fashion credentials in order to capture the luxury consumer that might be drifting down market looking for better value. For Cos, that meant staging fashion shows in Athens and New York over recent seasons and elevating the product offering (to include a divisive £1,000 coat). For H&M, they’ve invested in scaling the brand’s premium studio range, and are also using events to try and demonstrate that the affordable main line can exist in high fashion contexts. And it’s not just H&M Group using the runway to mark a new brand vision. Topshop staged a fashion show in Trafalgar Square for its divisive brand relaunch last month, while Asos staged a runway to unveil its latest Adidas collaboration.
“We want to show the audience we are serious about fashion, but fashion for everybody,” Andersson says. “The luxury industry might address the 1 per cent, but I love working for the 99 per cent. Fashion should be accessible for everyone. So this event isn’t just about a visual look, it’s about that philosophy.”
Long-term vision
H&M’s events are high production value and clearly high budget, which could feel incongruous with the company’s financial headwinds of late. Many brands cut marketing budgets in recent years in order to mitigate losses. But H&M’s executive team has a long-term view.
“I’m fortunate enough to work with our CEO Daniel and also our chair Karl-Johan Persson. With them, every decision is about investing very long term, which feels especially good when you’re working with branding because these kinds of things take time,” Andersson says. “You do this kind of [activation], obviously it won’t show in the tills the day after, not even the week after. But then you pick up the sentiments from the consumer, or you hear that people in the creative industries are talking about H&M. When everyone is facing a little bit of a headwind, people are looking for energy. We want to give that energy.”
Andersson hopes that these events will underline that H&M is for a diverse shopper and can address a broader consumer than other high street competitors. “Thinking of our main competitors, whether it’s Zara or Uniqlo, they have a distinct style. We don’t have that specific style. We are much more like a platform, like Spotify, and then you can mix your song, or you can create your playlist,” he explains.
Last night’s collection followed the more maximalist mood fashion is moving into, with punk influence and plenty of checks. But H&M’s music events over the last few seasons have also helped the brand create intrigue, even if collections reflected the quiet luxury trend, Andersson adds. “When fashion becomes a little bit more basic, you have to find new ways of playing with it and inspiring people.”
The key is to do so without alienating existing shoppers. The public involvement in the show is one thing, but H&M will also feature the collections in a simpler, less high fashion context across its AW25 campaigns, to offer customers a different point of view on how to style them, he adds. The retailer will also experiment with different retail strategies to sell the collection, with some key items only available in-store, “learning from the Supremes of this world to create the fear of missing out”.
In terms of future activations, there’s definitely more in the pipeline, Andersson tells me. “You create the model and you have to play it again and again and again, and eventually people will see it and they will understand — it’s not a story you can tell with one event,” he says. “So you have to be very focused and be very sharp and very and not be distracted by everyone else. So we will continue with events and collaborations.”
That said, Andersson is keen to keep mixing it up. “H&M almost should be like you’re chasing soap in the shower. Once you believe that you understand what we’re doing, boom, we will fly off in another direction.”
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