Tuxedo Suit by Viktor & Rolf for H&M

Personally, I feel the Viktor & Rolf X H&M collection has been one of the best to come out of the H&M designer collaboration series thus far. It's now coming up on three years since the collection launched, and I remember feeling very frustrated at having landed myself in the predicament of living in Minnesota, when, two years prior, I was in a city out East that was special enough to carry Karl Lagerfeld for H&M. While the rest of the world went on a crazy rampage for Viktor & Rolf, I felt left out and saddened that if I truly wanted to join the party, I'd have to shell out for the skyrocketing Ebay prices...I never got my hands on a single piece of the men's collection that November of 2006...

Somehow, I temporarily got over the fact that it just wasn't meant to be that I would own a piece of the action, and I moved on...

...that is, until I resurfaced on some old postings on the SuFu Marketplace Forums this past summer, and my interest in tracking down a key piece or two was reignited. Periodically, I've been crawling onto Ebay and searching out what's currently up for auction. The majority of the time, my search comes up with only women's pieces. But every so often, a men's item will pop up. I'm now under the impression that for whatever initial reason -- perhaps the men's line was not produced in such mass quantity, or the initial collectors remain to hang onto their finds -- pieces from the men's portion of the collection are much harder to find these days than their female counterparts.

Recently, the smoking/tuxedo suit -- both jacket and pants...and in my size! -- was put up, and I'm very pleased with myself for winning the auction. I must say, the resalel value for the items in this collection -- both men and women -- remains very favorable to the seller. I'm happy I did not pay over the initial selling price, given this is a used item, but I was relatively surprised at the winning bid.

I cannot wait for this suit to arrive! Once it does, I'll have to take better pictures than the ones used in the auction. Perhaps I'll get a chance to whip it out this holiday season.