H&M mixes fashion with music, but does it make shopping more fun?

Anyone with a minor online shopping addiction will know that H&M’s website is pretty easy to navigate. It stays true to its brand with minimal styling, big images and a few cool features – like being able to try your clothing selections onto models with weird-looking faces.

But now the Swedish clothing company wants to mix things up, make online shopping more fun and appeal to a slightly younger audience for its Divided range all in one go. Its solution? Combining our love of fashion with our love of music.

H&M teamed up with Ogilvy & Mather Advertising Shanghai to create a new summer fashion catalogue with a difference for shoppers from mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. Called  Fashion Mixer, the shopping site allows H&M fans to select items from the range that all have their own unique sound effect and combine them to create personalised music tracks – users can then share their creations on Facebook, WeChat and Weibo to be in with a chance of winning Skullcandy headphones.

As competition between online retailers becomes more fierce it’s no surprise that brands are looking into ways to make people stick around on their sites for longer. But is a music-mixing experience really likely to make you pay more attention to H&M’s new range or will it just serve as a flashy distraction? Either way, the new initiative certainly appeals to our love of creating things and stamping our personality on the world around us.