Joining forces
Who will Ikea collaborate with next?
Christopher Kane for Topshop, Beyoncé for H&M, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley for Marks & Spencer – the big-name collaboration continues to attract huge hype for high-street fashion retailers.
So it’s little wonder that the homeware behemoth Ikea has followed suit, and begun enlisting acclaimed designers from across the globe to bring high-end style to the masses.
The 73-year-old Swedish store has already enjoyed sell-out success from partnerships with industry names such as Ilse Crawford, whose muchlauded Sinnerlig collection appeared in stores last year.
Now, it has announced collections with the British designer Tom Dixon and the Danish design brand Hay, which are already causing a buzz.
Hay’s collection of furniture and accessories, set to go on sale next year, has been described as having “a classic Scandinavian feel, with light colours, high quality and clean design”. Along with products such as a chair, bench, table and lamp, Ikea has even commissioned the company to redesign its iconic blue and yellow Frakta bags in white and forest green – although Ikea devotees will be relieved to hear that the canteen meatballs are going to remain unadulterated. Working with such distinct and distinguished creators might seem an unusual move for a store best known for its cut-price bowls and £12 Billy bookshelves, one of which is said to sell every 10 seconds. But the partnerships have not gone unnoticed. “Yo, Ikea, allow Kanye to create, allow him to make his thing,” the musician and rapper Kanye West recently implored in an interview with the BBC. It followed a tweet he had sent some months earlier in which he described being “super-inspired” by a store visit, praising the “really amazing company” that left his mind “racing with the possibilities”. If the brand was seeking a stamp of approval from a cooler crowd, then West’s interest can’t have hurt. Earlier this year, Ikea released its first collaboration with a fashion designer – Katie Eary, the 33-year-old Briton whose creations recently appeared on the Kardashian clan at New York Fashion Week, and who counts West among her biggest admirers.
Eary, whose vibrantly coloured creations feature the likes of wigwearing flamingos and cheetah-hawk hybrids, relished the chance to team up with the brand.
“Designers’ work is so expensive that it’s always going to be out of reach for regular customers,” she explains.
Working with Ikea changes that. “They’ve mastered everything when it comes to cheap, easy-to-use furniture and making a tiny space work, no matter where you are,” Eary says. “I was so excited when they said they wanted to collaborate and look at fashion.”
The result was Giltig, a collection aimed at young men – a demographic little addressed in Ikea’s stores. Filled with graphic print crockery and cushions adorned with eyeball prints, the range sold out within weeks.
For Marcus Engman, who has been Ikea’s head of design since 2012, the collaborations are “not about names, it’s about learning. The designers we’ve collaborated with are big for a reason – it’s because they’re smart, and we want to work with the best.”
He contacted Eary “because we wanted to learn more about how fashion works, particularly digital printing”. He adds: “Big companies have a responsibility to investigate new possibilities all the time – if you’re a market leader, you should try to lead the market, rather than just follow it.”
The focal point of Tom Dixon’s upcoming collection will be “a bed that can convert into all sorts of things”, he explains – where “the bed will become a sofa. For most sofa beds, the beds are secondary, but this will be the other way around.”
For Dixon, whose current seating offerings sell for up to £5,900, placement in some of Ikea’s 387 stores will allow him to work “at a more democratic price point”. His “living platform”, which goes on sale in early 2018, will “allow hacking – people will be able to add and modify components”. He likens it to an iPhone, with buyers able to “customise in the way they do with apps”.
Selling through one of the biggest purveyors of beds in the world – one in 10 Europeans is reportedly conceived on an Ikea mattress – its potential impact on the bedroom of the future is striking.
Alluring as distinctive works by the likes of Eary and Dixon are, Ikea’s ventures are driven, first and foremost, by its customers’ needs. Staff members – Engman included – carry out thousands of home visits each year in cities around the world; it is this desire to get close with those they are selling to, he believes, that separates them from the competition.
Yet the company is not the only homeware brand to use an A-List name to appeal to buyers. Habitat teamed up with fashion wunderkind Henry Holland on his first interiors collection this year, while Dolce & Gabbana worked with Smeg to create a series of limited-edition fridges.
This trend for blink-and-you’llmiss-it ranges, released for a short period, will increase, Eary says. “Companies want to look relevant and cool, and as though they aren’t being left behind – but we’ll have to wait and see how much longevity collaborations really have.”
As long as Engman can convince top designers to sprinkle their magic, the draw of bargain-priced brilliance for the masses will surely endure.