Design för alla? En kvalitativ studie av modets påstådda demokratisering och konsumenters upplevda symboliska värde av H&Ms designsamarbeten.

Sammanfattning: The aim of this bachelor thesis is to examine consumers’ perceived symbolic value of H&M’s designer collaborations and if they consider the concept as a democratization of fashion. These collaborations are a part of a bigger and more complex development of the fashion industry. Therefore, the analysis begins with a literature study which discusses the alleged democratization of fashion. Thereafter, the analysis focuses on consumers’ perceptions of collaborations between H&M and fashion designers. A qualitative method, consisting of one in-depth interview followed by three focus groups, was used to collect the empirical material. The informants are students at Lund University between the age of 21-27 years. The theoretical framework used to analyze the material, consists of three main theories: Jean-Noël Kapferer’s theory of branding, Pierre Bourdieus’ theory of capital, field and habitus as well as Patrik Aspers’ theory of markets and value. The first part of the analysis shows that a democratization of fashion is not applicable to all agents within the fashion field. Furthermore, the study shows that consumers see both advantages and disadvantages in collaborations between a high fashion brand and a low fashion brand. Firstly, they see it as a great opportunity to buy design products to a lower price whilst the price is too high to be sold in an H&M store. Secondly, a human’s knowledge and background affect the perceived symbolic value. The informants categorize the products in the collaboration as H&M rather than design. Moreover, if the customer is familiar with the fashion designer collaborating with H&M, the perceived symbolic value of the collaboration is higher. Thirdly, with the amount of fashion collaborations existing today, customers do not see the phenomenon as outstanding anymore. This gives today’s collaborations a lower symbolic value than earlier collaborations.