A shop in Västerås and a name that means “hers”.

H&M began as a single women’s-wear shop. In 1947 Erling Persson opened a store in Västerås, the town west of Stockholm where, according to the Swedish business site Dagens PS in a February 2023 history of the company, his family ran a charcuterie. He called the shop Hennes, Swedish for “hers”, and English Wikipedia says it sold only women’s clothing. Swedish Wikipedia gives the same year and town and lists Persson as the company’s managing director from 1947 until 1982.

The idea came from abroad. Dagens PS says Persson had travelled to the United States in 1946, on a trip meant to sell Christmas plants that did not work out, and noticed there the modern chain Lerner, which sold fashionable clothes directly over the counter. Before Hennes, the magazine says, he had sold pens, writing materials and paper from small premises in central Stockholm with a partner, Björn Wennberg, in a business that grew into the chain now called Ur & Penn. After Västerås, it says, the next Hennes opened in Uppsala, and the big step came with a shop on Kungsgatan in central Stockholm.

The name changed in 1968. Persson was looking for new premises at Hötorget in central Stockholm, Dagens PS says, and when no suitable space was available he bought the hunting and gun retailer Mauritz Widforss, taking over both its shop and its large stock of men’s clothing. The new store opened as Hennes & Mauritz. Swedish Wikipedia records the company bought as Mauritz Widforss Handels AB, a seller of hunting equipment and menswear, and English Wikipedia says the purchase brought a menswear collection into the range. The two names, later reduced to their initials and joined by an ampersand, became the brand; Swedish Wikipedia adds that in Swedish the company is often written simply as HM.

The company has returned to that moment in its own collections. In 2013 H&M released a men’s line called Mauritz Archive. The Austrian fashion site fashion.at reported in May 2013 that it would reach stores and the online shop worldwide on 19 September 2013, that it referenced the 1968 purchase of the men’s outdoor store in central Stockholm, and that the first previews suggested a classic forester style.

Listing, expansion and a family of fascias.

The shops crossed borders slowly at first. Swedish Wikipedia dates the first store outside Sweden to Norway in 1964 and the move into Denmark to 1967. H&M listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange in 1974, and English Wikipedia says the first store outside Scandinavia opened in London in 1976. Online selling began in 1998, and the company opened on Fifth Avenue in New York on 31 March 2000, the start of its expansion beyond Europe.

Swedish Wikipedia’s list of managing directors runs from Erling Persson to Stefan Persson (1982–1998), then Fabian Månsson and Rolf Eriksen, then Karl-Johan Persson (2009–2020), Helena Helmersson (2020–2024) and, from January 2024, Daniel Ervér. The listed company is H & M Hennes & Mauritz AB, with its head office in Stockholm.

Over time the group added a set of separate shop concepts, each with its own name and look. English Wikipedia says COS opened its flagship on London’s Regent Street in March 2007 with a catwalk show at the Royal Academy, with a minimalist style drawn from architecture, graphics and design. Swedish Wikipedia records that in spring 2008 H&M took over the Swedish fashion company Fabric Scandinavien, which ran the Weekday and Monki chains, and that in January 2018 it announced Afound, a marketplace for discounted fashion and lifestyle goods. Arket followed in 2017, and & Other Stories sits alongside them. Home furnishings, announced in 2008 and first sold online, now trade as H&M Home.

Recent years brought further changes. On 2 March 2022 H&M announced the end of its retail operations in Russia following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, English Wikipedia records. In 2026, the same source says, the company set up a production house in Barcelona, with a team for design, sourcing and supplier relations.

Design and documentation.

A fashion retailer’s identity is met first on the street. The fascia above the shopfront carries the name at a scale meant to be read from across the road, so the wordmark may need to work in illuminated letters, in flat paint and in vinyl on glass. Inside, the same mark returns at a smaller size on till points, fitting-room doors and wayfinding signs, and the colour that sits behind it can be as recognisable as the letters themselves.

The shopping bag leaves the shop with the customer. Paper, plastic or fabric, with twisted or flat handles, a bag carries the name out of the shop and down the street, and its design can be as plain as one colour field, one mark and generous margins.

Swing tags and woven labels do quieter work. The tag carries size, care and code information, but its card weight, colour and typeface also signal which line or sub-brand a garment belongs to.

Window displays change with the seasons. Seasonal schemes, mannequin styling and printed graphics let a retailer refresh its look without touching the fascia, while the logo on the fascia stays the same.

Initials, an ampersand and the guest designer.

The H&M name is a contraction of a history: two shop names, one for women’s clothes and one for a hunting outfitter, shortened to a pair of letters with an ampersand between them. Alongside that mark, the company has repeatedly put other names in front of customers: models, singers and designers.

Swedish Wikipedia’s list of the people who appeared in H&M’s Christmas advertising begins with Elle Macpherson in 1990 and Cindy Crawford in 1991, and includes the singer Kylie Minogue in 1998 and Claudia Schiffer in 2000.

The guest designer arrived in November 2004, when selected stores carried a collection by Karl Lagerfeld. The Local reported on 15 November 2004 that crowds had gathered outside the Swedish stores carrying the line before the doors opened at ten on a Friday morning, and quoted Dagens Industri’s account from the Hamngatan store in Stockholm that the clothes were gone within minutes. FashionUnited reported on 16 November 2004 that shoppers in Paris had queued outside H&M from 6am for the limited-edition “Lagerfeld for H&M” collection, while reactions in London were more subdued, according to an Oxford Street store manager.

Further pairings followed. English Wikipedia lists Viktor & Rolf in November 2006, Madonna in March 2007, Roberto Cavalli in November 2007, Marimekko and Comme des Garçons in 2008, Jimmy Choo on 14 November 2009, Versace on 19 November 2011 and Balmain on 5 November 2015, the last announced on the Instagram page of its designer, Olivier Rousteing. Swedish Wikipedia adds Marni and Maison Martin Margiela in 2012.

For a design guide, H&M shows how a pair of initials can hold together a growing set of shop names, from COS to Arket, and a long run of borrowed designer names without losing its own. Compare it with Zara and Uniqlo, two other international clothing retailers, or with Primark. For this guide we use initial red, blush and bag white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep H&M’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.