H&M Home is Branching Out Into Collectible Design

H&M Home is presenting the first of its new “Design Lab” collections, which is made up of a series of collectible interior objects made from premium materials. Crafted entirely by the in-house team, the drop blends together a series of concepts. Primarily, the collection looks at the intersection of tangibility and intangibility, through the use of texture, form, and material.

Each of the nine objects – from the glass vessels to the puffy blanket – is designed to be as impactful alone as it is when part of the collection as a whole. But the largest piece of the collection, the lounge chair, is intended to thread the whole vision together, through its black padded upholstery and steel frame. Elsewhere, three larger and three small glass bowls are multi-purposeful – on one side, they act as a vase, and when tipped upside down, they become a bowl. Each is available in three shades: inky black, Klein blue, and transparent. Colorless glass was also chosen for a modular floor lamp, which the team describes as being more of a “lighting sculpture”.

To find out more ahead of the collection’s launch, we sat down with the H&M Home’s Head of Design, Evelina Kravaev Söderberg.

Hypebeast: What made now the right time for H&M HOME to move into the higher-end space of collectible design?

Evelina Kravaev Söderberg: H&M Home is a design-driven company so we always want to evolve creatively and like to surprise our customers in new ways. The timing feels right due to the urge for personality and uniqueness in design. We have a very skilled design team and we are happy to show the creators, the people, behind the creations to give the product even more personality.

HB: Can you tell us more about the process, from how you went about deciding on the pieces to include – to what forms and materials you ended up using?

EKS: We wanted to explore the connection between the forms and similarities by exploiting the difference in the materials. It was interesting to put the collection together and see the space around the objects. Every object should feel soft regardless of the material we have used. We wanted to use hard materials in soft shapes and soft materials in geometric shapes. We chose objects that could live alone as one but also work beautifully together.

HB: What “design codes” have you drawn upon in order to set this collection apart from the existing home collections?

EKS: The design team has been looking into the relationship between contrasting materials and shapes, connected to perception. A marriage of hard materials and soft shapes combined with the power of volume and size. Designed pieces that pop and at the same time embrace you in soft security. So the codes are volume, size, and perception.

The Design Lab collection will be available in selected stores only and online from 17th October 2022.