H&M Office Wear
As of this year, a trend that began to make me nervous, excited and disappointed all at once was H&M’s entrance into women’s work wear.
Stage 1: Nervousness
I was nervous because having such a large retailer enter the space LVD would like to go into pitches us in direct competition with them. It would only divide our segmentation further and leave us at a lost price wear against the retail giant.
Stage 2: Excitement
I then became excited because it might mean that the problems I wanted to solve with LVD might be resolved at very cheap prices and decent quality by a large retailer. Even though a business idea would go down the drain, at least I’d have fabulous clothes to wear to work for cheap, right?
Stage 3: Disappointment
I went into H&M for myself to try and and sample the clothing and found the same dilemmas as in the past. Except this time, coupled with extremely poor design and quality.
Lint was queen in the work wear isle and the dresses and slacks I tried on made me feel fat and bloated. Great clothes always make you look better than you do. That’s LVD’s value proposition essentially.
After these 3 stages, I am now at the blogging stage where I share with all of you reasons why I am again disappointed with our so called options in the current market. I’d love to hear what you all think.
So the idea is you can find all you need for the office, from suits to “business casual” attire. This H&M extension could be offering quality suits at crazy cheap prices for women. A dream come true!
What you’re promised
And to some extent, it does accomplish this. For those whose body types fit they designs as well as those who can manage to avoid lint throughout the day, it’s really quite a terrific deal.
However, as you continue browsing, the options become less and less appealing.
Well, it may depend on what kind of work culture you’re coming from. My views are always from a highly professional, white collar perspective. We’re talking high-end consulting and investment banking pre-professional attire. Coming from this background, many other options are really just wrong.
This is embarrassing.
This is just wrong.
They offer a floral top that
1. Seems like something my mom would wear at home and 2. is neither fashionable nor professional.
They also offer
some short dresses with designs and fabric that would be somewhat embarrassing to wear in a corporate sphere where it may already be hard enough to be taken seriously as a young female. I don’t understand what the agenda is; perhaps for people looking for fun work wear where the code is casual? But then, why not just wear casual clothing? Why place it under office wear? I’m just very confused and saddened by how mixed up and messed up the execution is. I had so much hope for the women’s work wear section and it’s just been thrown under a blanket.