Every New H&M Item That Made Me Question Whether It Was Designer or Not

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(Image credit: Courtesy of H&M)

Because I spend so much time studying runway collections, both current ones and those in the archives, it's not an easy feat to fool me into thinking a fast fashion piece could be designer. Nine times out of 10, even when I'm just looking at pictures online, I can spot the differences between a $1000 piece and a $10 one in milliseconds. On rare occasions, though, certain items will stump me, which is what happened when I scrolled through H&M this morning.

From tweed lady jackets and ribbed knit tops to draped body-con dresses and tailored separates, the contents of H&M's new-arrivals page, which I meticulously scanned for hours today, turned out to be some of the best, most elevated that I've seen in ages, especially given that fact not one of my favorites from the bunch costs more than $135 (and some start at just $15). Below, mosey through 30 pieces that genuinely had me thinking I needed glasses after looking at the prices—that is how expensive they appeared. 

Coming up next: Wealth's the Word: 42 Items That Don't Shout But Scream Expensive

Senior Fashion Editor

Eliza Huber is a New York City–based fashion editor who specializes in trend reporting, brand discovery, and celebrity style. She joined Who What Wear in 2021 after almost four years on the fashion editorial team at Refinery29, the job she took after graduating with a marketing degree from the University of Iowa. She has since launched two monthly columns, Let's Get a Room and Ways to Wear; profiled the likes of Dakota Fanning, Diane Kruger, Katie Holmes, and Sabrina Carpenter for WWW's monthly cover features; and reported on everything from the relationship between Formula One and fashion to the top trends from fashion month, season after season. Eliza now lives on the Upper West Side and spends her free time researching F1 fashion imagery for her side Instagram accounts @thepinnacleoffashion and @f1paddockfits, running in Central Park, and scouring eBay for '90s Prada and '80s Yves Saint Laurent.