SHANGHAI – H&M on Thursday revealed that Chinese designer Wei Donghui, founder of Jacques Wei, will design a Chinese New Year capsule collection for the year of the horse in 2026.

The collaboration is the result of an ongoing partnership between the Swedish fast-fashion chain and Shanghai Fashion Week, signed last year. Wei is the second designer to headline the project, with fellow Shanghai-based brand Garçon by Garçon being the inaugural collaborator.

A series of teaser images indicated that the collection will prominently feature a golden horse motif. One can expect the range to embody Wei’s signature blend of Eastern sensibility and Western modernity that’s been well demonstrated in his previous collections.

For fall 2025, for example, Wei offered a collection that infused old-school Parisian glam with new-age surrealism. He played with sheer lace, feathers, faux fur, sequins and animal prints and repurposed Irish artist Ted Pim’s painting “Echoes Echoed,” reflecting the collection’s fantastical escapism amid China‘s economic downturn.

A graduate of Paris’s Atelier Chardon Savard in fashion design, Wei lived in Paris for seven years before launching his eponymous studio in Shanghai in 2019. His shows are often considered a highlight of Shanghai Fashion Week.

The brand’s main spring 2026 collection will be unveiled Friday by the Bund.

For the H&M collaboration, Wei said he wanted to balance traditional symbols with contemporary aesthetics for a collection that blends his artistic expression with wearability and auspiciousness.

“May you be like a steed, freely showing your true self with strength and elegance. I highly recommend the split fringe skirt. The flowing tassels mimic the grace of a horse’s mane, perfect for turning heads at Chinese New Year gatherings. I would pair it with brass horse-buckle blazer for a look that balances power and sophistication, embodying the ‘steed-like’ spirit of the collection,” added Wei.

H&M said Wei designs for modern women who are “independent, elegant, and full of vitality,” and through this collaboration, it aims to further support China’s burgeoning emerging fashion scene.

H&M, which entered mainland China in 2007, has been actively engaging with local fashion creatives since 2015, when Ximon Lee scored the H&M Design Award. The brand threw a high-profile launch event in Shanghai when the capsule hit the store.

It later worked with Angel Chen and Pronounce on region-exclusive capsules and supported the Hu Fashion Forward Prize in 2021.

The brand’s exchange with the local fashion industry was put on hold when the brand got caught in the Xinjiang cotton controversy in 2021.

H&M later emphasized its long-term commitment to the country and made great efforts to restore its relationship with the local market.

Last month, the brand had its grand return to Shanghai‘s all-important Huaihai Road retail artery with the opening of House of H&M, the Swedish retailer’s latest flagship concent.

The six-story corner store holds special meaning for H&M as it was the company’s first mainland China store when the brand entered the market in 2007.

In 2022, the retailer decided to close the store following prolonged backlash after the Xinjiang cotton controversy and weak consumer demand post-COVID-19 lockdown.