H&M has eyes on Los Angeles.
The fashion company is opening three new stores in the area, WWD has learned exclusively. From August to November, H&M will unveil a stand-alone location in Beverly Hills; a space at The Original Farmer’s Market (adjacent to The Grove), and a relocation at the Beverly Center. There’s also a new store coming to Brea, Calif.
In celebration of the expansion — timed just ahead of Coachella, which kicks off this weekend — H&M threw a large-scale music festival in L.A. on Wednesday night at Ace Mission Studios in Boyle Heights, with performances by a number of acts including Doechii, Robyn, Jamie xx, PinkPantheress and Sailorr.
The evening, as part of an ongoing global concert series, brought out about 5,000 guests, a mix of music artists, actors and influencers, including Tyla, Dakota Fanning, Riley Keough, Barbie Ferreira, Chase Stokes, Dixie D’Amelio, Tinashe, Laufey, Amelia Gray, Delilah Belle, Alex Consani, Amelia Dimoldenberg and Maddie Ziegler. All wore looks from H&M’s spring 2025 collection, which dropped Thursday.
“We, more or less, have always been tapping into music,” said Jörgen Andersson, H&M’s chief creative officer. “And in the past, we’ve done design collaborations and collections with names like Madonna. We’ve worked with Beyoncé, with Kylie Minogue. So, we’ve been in that space. And it comes natural, because the intersection of music and fashion has always been interesting. And so, then we decided to go even deeper into it, and not only work with established artists, but also with emerging artists.”
H&M began nurturing a relationship with Doechii before her recent breakout moment at the Grammy Awards this year, where she gave a show-stealing performance and took home Best Rap Album for “Alligator Bites Never Heal.” The same can be said for Charli XCX — who kicked off London Fashion Week last year with H&M, then teamed again with the brand for a surprise show in New York’s Times Square in November for its flagship reopening at 1472 Broadway — with the success of “Brat.”
But the L.A. event wasn’t just for celebrities; the brand opened the experience to customers via social media sign-ups and its employees.
“Our brand is ultimately about liberating fashion for the many,” Andersson said. The brand also hosted events in Paris, Berlin, Milan and Stockholm, where it’s headquartered. “We say, if the luxury industry is addressing the 1 percent of the population, we like to address the other 99 percent.”
The party, featuring three stages, offered L.A. favorites like In-N-Out Burger and Pink’s Hot Dogs. Dancers glided through the crowd, modeling pieces from the new collection.
“L.A. is a very important and valued city for the overall H&M brand, but then obviously for our U.S. market, for our Americas region overall,” said Linda Li, head of customer activation and marketing for H&M Americas. “It’s such an important cultural hub, such important entertainment hub. And one of the things that we see is that our brand target of the fashion-interested, fashion-inspired customer, there’s just a very high penetration of that customer base here. Overall, it’s always been a focus market for us, and we already have a quite strong retail presence currently, but we’ve really focused on building that retail presence.”
The Beverly Hills store will be the largest offering in L.A., according to H&M, and in line with elements from the SoHo location, which opened last spring. H&M also brought new locations to Miami, Chicago, Montreal and Quito, Ecuador.
The company operates 26 retail stores in L.A. County, among the 74 in total in California and 490 in the U.S.
“It’s extremely important that we penetrate the locations and the zip codes where we see a higher penetration of these customers,” Li added.
