Anamika Khanna X H&M: Are you ready for the coolest collaboration of 2024?

You know you can expect magic when the doyenne of Indian fashion, Kolkata-based designer Anamika Khanna, known to metamorphose Indian textile and design to give it a contemporary facelift, collaborates with the buzziest international high-street brand, H&M, known for the most iconic partnerships in the past few years. About time…was the sentiment …when I, along with other friends from the media were made privy of this pivotal coming together. 

Excited about the global celebration of Anamika Khanna’s exceptionally cool avant-garde aesthetics for a growing market of fashion aficionados and enthusiasts, I sat down for an exclusive chat with the icon herself and Creator Advisor for H&M, Ann-Sofie Johansson. We explored the driving influences, what to expect from the most anticipated global drop of the year, and everything in between.

Pratishtha Dobhal: Ann, you joined H&M way back in 1987 and have had an incredible career trajectory within the company, what was the one significant turning point in all these years for you?

Ann-Sofie Johansson: I started to work at one of the stores in Stockholm and then went on to work as a design assistant when we were just 10-15 people in the design team. I loved working with young people as I moved further up into the system which also kept me on my toes. That’s the thing about fashion…it keeps you young. Everything that I have been a part of in all these years and achieved, has been icing on the cake, along with working on collaborations like these, so it’s been a good journey. These partnerships have been a huge win for us, the designers, and for those who love great designs the world over. 

PD: Anamika, I would love for you to take me back to when the conversation on the collaboration started, how long the process has been, and what kinds of markets you are looking at through this collaboration.

Anamika Khanna: We started more than a year ago…it’s been almost 14 months since our first conversation began. The first thing that I was told was to be true to myself and yet design a collection which would be true to H&M and for me, that was important to start to keep in mind who I was designing for and what I stand for in my design. To bring that balance out, to edit, to filter, to know when to stop, was part of the process. I came up with a creative concept, presented it to them, and then the collaborative process started. This was further followed by choosing the pieces, keeping prices in mind, and sustainability mapping of the collection regarding where it was going to be produced. We have also gone on to refine things like how the product is going to be presented, and what kind of storytelling we will do. Honestly, it’s been an incredible journey of learning. 

PD: What was an “Aha moment” for you over the course of this collaboration? Can you quantify the time it took in hours for the craftsmanship that went into it?

AK: That it’s very doable. You know when you look at it from a distance, you never think you’ll be a part of this. When I saw the first creative just recently, I was like, yes, this is it! You are so involved in the process of creating it that you don’t realise when you’ve finally managed to put it all together. 

This collaboration is not couture and therefore a derivative of it, so when we were doing the craft we were doing it very mindfully. In this case, man-hours would not be relevant. What was amazing was the whole entire process of collaboration which was time-consuming and needed your love. You grow up as a designer and as a human being in the process because you are working with a completely different set of people. It’s been an amazing learning process where I went one step at a time. 

PD: Way back when you started, you didn’t have much design experience, yet you charged ahead…

AK: I didn’t charge ahead. There were a lot of challenges and a lot of mistakes I made which I got away with. I have been through a lot in life but it wasn’t like I charged ahead. It’s been a slow journey, with one thing leading to another. I went in with a little money and decided I didn’t want to take any money from my family and just go ahead with what I wanted to do. I started when I was very young and had just had my boys. At that time, I never thought about what I was looking for as the end goal. But the only thing that worked to my advantage was that because I didn’t know anything, I was doing things out of my own will. The one thing I always knew was that I was not going to buy fabric, cut it up and make it up into a design. I wanted to create, so I started texturing, I started making fabrics through different kinds of embroidery. I was doing these new things and I just rolled with it…the only thing I knew was I wouldn’t do what was already done before.   

Hardly surprising that Anamika Khanna is a name to be reckoned with, on home turf and internationally.

Here’s a sneak peek into the collection set to be launched on September 5! Need we say more?

 

 

 

 

All images are credited to H&M India.
 

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