has anyone gone to the H&M here?

I heard that this was one of the lucky stores to get the collection!

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By Rachel Sanderson
LONDON, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Frenzied shoppers stripped mannequins bare at H&M (HMb.ST: Quote, Profile , Research) stores on Thursday as the world's third largest fashion retailer put on sale a capsule collection by Italian designer Roberto Cavalli.

Scrambling for an affordable slice of the "king of animal prints" worn by stars like Paris Hilton, fashion fans around world indicated there is no let up to the global craze for celebrity-designed, celebrity look-alike fashion. Zeynep Tune, 22, Cigdem Keles, 24, and her sister Gamze Keles, 23, queued from 7 a.m. (0700 GMT) outside H&M's London flagship store at Oxford Circus to buy the entire collection three times over -- one piece each for each of them.



Leopard print maxi-dresses and gold-coloured evening purses spilling from their arms, they said they didn't mind if they ended up all looking the same.

"We'd only do this for Cavalli. We love him," said Cigdem Keles flushed and bright eyed after fighting off other shoppers to grab more than 500 pounds ($1,050) worth of clothes.

In New York, more than 100 people lined up outside H&M on New York's Fifth Avenue eager to get their hands on Cavalli's trademark leopard prints and gold glitter at cheaper prices.
A bronze pleated evening gown from the collection costs 299 euros ($437.60) and is H&M's most expensive frock ever. But it's cheap compared with a 2,000 euro dress from Cavalli's own fashion house.


Francis Stewart, 24, and her 12-year-old cousin Margaret Baldwin were at the front of the line having camped out overnight in temperatures of about 4 degrees Celsius.

"We just love Cavalli's prints and his dresses. We wouldn't have missed this. It really didn't get that cold until about 5 a.m.," a shivering Stewart told Reuters.

TIE UP PROFIT


Cavalli for H&M is one of the company's biggest tie-ups and follows success with Stella McCartney and design duo Viktor & Rolf that helped boost profits for the world's biggest apparel retailer after Zara owner Inditex and The Gap.

H&M, which is marking 60 years in business, reported a 17 percent rise in third-quarter pre-tax profit in September to $674 million.
The collection is priced at a fraction of the designer's normal ready-to-wear charges, helped by H&M using producers in Romania, China and Turkey instead of the Italian manufacturers Cavalli uses for his own couture collections.
Luca Solca, an analyst at Bernstein Research, said he expected H&M to perform strongly through the end of this year and into the next thanks to launch of the Cavalli collection and the expansion of its online sales.


"It has been a success in all markets, a strong and even sales pattern over the whole world," H&M spokeswoman Kristina Stenvinkel told Reuters from H&M's headquarters in Stockholm.

Local Swedish paper Svenska Dagbladet said several hundred people queuing before store in central Stockholm opened and the collection sold out in a few minutes.

Back in London, one sales assistant, who wanted to remain anonymous, described a rush of hundreds of shoppers down the steps of the store when the doors opened. "It was terrifying, like a rugby scrum," she said while guarding a mannequin to stop shoppers ripping the clothes from its back. (Additional reporting by Belinda Goldsmith in New York and Rebecka Roos in Stockholm, Editing by Paul Casciato)

http://investing.reuters.co.uk/news/...1-ArticlePage2