The lengths that some fashion fans will go to for a glimpse at a brand new designer collection?
Well, hacking isn't out of the question, evidently. Olivier Rousteing's master plan of dropping only the most elusive nuggets to tease Balmain's upcoming collaboration with H&M hit a slight snag.
The Cut reported that a woman in Chicago has posted 99 images to Instagram that she is saying belong to the much- talked about collection, which was not supposed to be released to the public until November.
Kathryn Swartz Rees first announced her discovery on Twitter Tuesday evening, tagging the message with the hashtag: #HMBALMAINNATION. Her Instagram account has since been deactivated.
She says she simply "happened to search at the right time using the right parameters," she told The Cut.
According to Swartz Rees, she was able to pull images of the collection right from H&M's site because Google had supposedly indexed the URL, which allowed her to retrieve the images with a well-timed Google sweep. This page she alleges she found them on has been taken down since.
Previously, we've only seen select Balmain for H&M pieces sported by members of Rousteing's #BalmainArmy on the red carpet and in the just-released ad campaign. However, the leak was the first comprehensive look at the entire collection — women's and men's apparel, shoes, and accessories.
And the pictures Swartz Rees posted looked fairly legit. They also looked absolutely fabulous. Since the 'leak' a new Instagram account has come online, featuring many pieces similar to that seen last night.
We already want the boots.
Oh- and this dress too! To be honest, we want one of everything.
On top of the beaded blazer and similarly-embellished pieces we’ve already seen on Kendall Jenner and the rest for supermodel squad, there's rich velvet, satin-look fabric, and and other similar attention to detail we've seen from Rousteing's Balmain.
Swartz Rees told The Cut that the there are different colourways available for certain items that didn't feature in her Instagram feed.
There's less than one month before the official collection is due to be launched and now we're feeling even more excited about it. H&M told Buzzfeed News about the leak:
“Images from our Balmain x H&M collaboration have surfaced. We are pleasantly surprised by our fans positive reaction to the collection.”
