No. 279 Puts on Its Game Face (Published 2012) (2024)

“CAN you handle a little criticism?” Edwin Mercedes asked. It was a few days before H&M, the Swedish fast fashion retailer, was to open a 25,000-square-foot store in the Time Warner Center, known at the company simply as No. 279.

Mr. Mercedes, 36, in bluejeans and a red sweatshirt, his coolly shaved head hidden under a cap, a half-dozen pins stuck to his metallic name badge, was overseeing a display of mannequins at the very front of the store. In H&M parlance, this is known as “the A spot,” meaning primo territory.

Mr. Mercedes has worked at H&M for 11 years, ever since he was a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology. He started as a sales adviser — the title the company uses for its 9,000 full- and part-time sales associates in the United States — in the store near Herald Square, and worked his way up to become a store visual manager, responsible for the look of several stores. His choices can make all the difference between what sells and what lingers on the racks at a company with annual sales of $1.4 billion in this country alone.

“One thing to keep in mind,” Mr. Mercedes said, eyeing a pancaked stack of pink sweaters, “is standards. We want perfect folds.”

He also faulted a display of imitation leather leggings, in elephant gray and creamy white, which were piled hopelessly on a table. And an ivory fringe skirt that was shown on a mannequin but was nowhere to be found nearby, violating a standard that clothes should always be “easy to find, easy to buy.”

The fault, dear shoppers, was mine.

The fashion world is well familiar with the global expansion of retailers like H&M, which have helped to democratize the runways with the promise of high fashion, instantly, and at a much lower price. Zara, owned by the Spanish company Inditex, overtook Gap as the biggest apparel retailer on the planet in 2008, and Uniqlo, owned by Fast Retailing in Japan, is vying to overtake Zara in the next decade.