As Arket Turns One, The H&M Brand Shares Its Learnings

Can you believe that Arket is one year old? What did we do without its perfectly proportioned T-shirts and versatile daywear beforehand? Creative director Ulrika Bernhardtz is equally surprised at how quickly the H&M-owned company, which has opened stores in London, Berlin, Stockholm and Copenhagen in the past 12 months, has become a bread-and-butter high-street brand.

“To see our products on real people, on social media, in our stores – and to hear feedback from all of those places – is very rewarding,” a modest Bernhardtz tells Vogue of its success so far. “It has been a lot of hard work, but it has all been worth it.”

Arket is celebrating its birthday in typical refined style with a campaign of the core wardrobe components that form the base of its collections. Each piece of tailoring, cashmere, outerwear or ready-to-wear is, the press release promises, the “perfect version of itself”. Take Bernhardtz’s word for this. Many of the anniversary products have been with the brand from the start, and have merely been honed into different iterations of everyday uniform. As she says, “the team saw a gap for a brand that is focused on quality, simplicity and design,” and they went and filled it.

“The Arket customer wants to build a wardrobe that will last for a long time,” Bernhardtz continues. “Nowadays people have higher expectations and less time, so they require easy, long-term solutions. That being said, a brand is a living thing, and we will continue to develop Arket with our customers.”

Next on the agenda is the third iteration of its "Artist Edition" series, in which an illustrator reimagines the childrenswear, and a string of UK store launches (Birmingham, look out, Arket is coming for you). Expansion, however, comes at a price, and Arket has no plans to throw its founding principles of transparency out the window for ubiquity.

“We really focus on the choice of materials we use, and we try to educate our customers on how they can take care of their products to prolong their lifespan,” Bernhardtz notes. “This can be in the form of studying vintage garments and developing custom yarns and fabrics by the in-house knitwear technician, or working with long-term collaborators, such as Japanese outerwear fabric suppliers and Italian suiting mills.” The website will continue to offer as much information as possible about the design and production process, so that the Arket customer can make an informed decision about the carbon footprint of their wardrobe.

The brand's self-described positioning as a "modern-day market" is in line with this eco-consciousness. To drive sustainability forward as a vital principle that underlines all aspects of the fashion industry, brands must educate customers as well as themselves.