Spring 2004 Style & Design

	Paris In Springtime With Nicole The Hilton sisters get a major makeover, starting with the season's ladylike new looks
	The Power List The 10 most powerful women in fashion and beauty, plus 10 up-and-comers
	Gisele: Back In Bloom Floral prints, along with mega-model Gisele Bundchen, are back to fashion
	The A List Here's what's selling in the global men's market, from Honolulu to Sydney

Although she oversees the design of the more than 500 million items that H&M sells every year, Van den Bosch is not an international celebrity like Karl (Lagerfeld) or Miuccia (Prada). When Van den Bosch started at the company, H&M was mostly buying up collections offered by Southeast Asian agents and putting them together in the store like pieces of a mismatched puzzle. In the late '80s, Van den Bosch began building a design team, and today it has access to the latest in computerized design software and color-matching programs, tools available only to billion-dollar international companies.

In the design studios, there are computers at every workstation, and the runways are only a click away. Miu Miu and Marc Jacobs are interesting references, says Van den Bosch. "Prada is a very good designer but not someone we should look too much at. [The clothes] are made up with very exclusive fabrics and are very worked." In any case, copying is strictly forbidden, and an H&M spokeswoman says there have been very few complaints. H&M keeps its eye on competitors' marketing strategies too. The company may even invite a "star" designer to oversee a special collection for the store, similar to Target's collaboration with Isaac Mizrahi, but Van den Bosch says nothing has been finalized.

Usually the company's design direction converges with the luxury houses' trends, but not always. One popular look H&M passed on a few years back was camouflage prints, judged by the Swedish management to be "war inspired." It has also banned vulgar or sexist language on T shirts and provocative children's clothing.

In the ateliers, color wheels, fabric samples and vaults of vintage finds illustrate the theme for spring, which is '50s-style femininity. It's a look that has also cropped up on runways, but according to Sara Wallander, co--head designer for the Divided collection, it's been in the air for a while. She caught onto it last spring when she became obsessed with finding a new pair of jeans. "Suddenly I had to have a pair of really straight-legged, unwashed denims," she says, blinking behind oversize glasses she picked up at a hip-hop store in Tokyo. She wore the jeans regularly to work--partly to convince colleagues they were going to be right for spring 2004, which the team began planning last May.

Others were feeling strongly about ditching baggy cargo pants. "It's a longing for femininity," says Ann-Sofie Johansson, the other co--head designer for Divided. Ladylike Audrey Hepburn dresses, full skirts and twin sets were the next logical step. Denim took a rockabilly turn with selvage. The fall runways substantiated the new direction, but Van den Bosch remains cautious: "We feel very much for narrow trousers, but the customers aren't ready." So H&M is offering intermediary versions as well, and the moment sales data spike, tens of thousands more pairs will be ordered.

Amazingly, every H&M store is restocked daily. A high-volume store like the Boulevard Haussmann flagship in Paris can receive as many as three truckloads of clothing a day. The bulk of the restocking is done between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m., so there's almost a science to shopping H&M. Experienced bargain hunters learn that the store displays two of every size at a time. When the mediums are sold out, for example, there will be more the next morning. Employees advise friends to come Tuesday to Friday mornings, within hours of the restocking.

How can H&M's prices be so much lower than competitors'? The enormous quantities ordered from suppliers (H&M owns no manufacturing plants) allow spectacular economies of scale that the company passes on to consumers. The company also credits cost controls--few executives have secretaries, for example. But human-rights groups charge that H&M, among others, keeps prices down by exploiting workers in Third World countries. Like other multinational groups that came under fire in the '90s, the company in 1997 instituted a code of conduct, which all suppliers must sign, and maintains inspectors in countries where its products are made. Still, watchdog groups continue to cite problems, including excessive overtime and lax health-and-safety regulations. Says Carl-Henric Enhorning, director of H&M investor relations: "We believe the best way to have a positive impact in developing markets is to be there and to be buying so that they have money to live on."

A different problem is the widespread perception among even the most enthusiastic customers that H&M's quality is poor and that the stores are difficult to shop. "I'm an H&M bulimic," says Olivia Benier, 25, who shops the Paris store. "The quality is not the best; but the real problem, it's Berezina," she says, referring to Napoleon's costly and chaotic river crossing as he retreated from Moscow. "You have to dig, sort and slave for a bargain. I wear light clothes to go shopping there because otherwise you're so hot you'd lose 50 kilos."

One of H&M's most important assets, say those who observe the sector, is its corporate culture, which encourages flexibility and adaptation. A recent program to even out inventory levels boosted H&M's gross margin by a remarkable 3 points, to 55%. (Gross margin is a key measure of how efficient a retailer is at its core business of selling goods.)

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