Martin Margiela and H&M: extreme fashion heads for the high street

A coat made from a duvet complete with removable cover; a jumper made from eight pairs of socks and a leather dress inspired by a car seat cover. These items of clothing, as odd as they might sound, are not the latest avant-garde catwalk looks or a spin on recycling chic. Instead, these they swing on the rails of H&M. These bold pieces, in stores in November, feature in the Swedish shop's most conceptual fashion collaboration to date, with Maison Martin Margiela, a brand more accustomed to Paris fashion week than the high street.

On Tuesday, to celebrate this off-kilter union, a nine storey derelict building in downtown Manhattan was transformed into a series of installations. Models, fashion designers and celebrities, including Sarah Jessica-Parker and Julianne Moore, entered on a concrete walkway, a typically Margiela spin on the red carpet.

Strip lights, peeling paint and crumbling walls epitomised the brand's aesthetic. Models wearing clothes from the H&M collection cavorted in white powder, which had been dusted on to large squares on the floor, creating impromptu artworks. These performances were in keeping with a label not known for the conventional catwalk experience.

"So many clothes look the same now, and actually they're quite easy when you put them on," says Margareta van den Bosch, creative adviser for H&M of this latest collection, which follows previous hit collaborations with the likes of Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney and Versace. "Oversizing and the hand-craft look – things they [Maison Martin Margiela] play with – are also in fashion at the moment, so it's really not so strange," she said.

Made up of 40 items for women and 30 for men, all of which are based on original pieces from the 23-year-old Margiela archive, more wearable styles, such as wool coats, coated denim and tailoring, will also go on sale. A range of stand-out accessories, including metallic sweetie-wrapper clutch bags, horse hair necklaces, hi-top trainers and "invisible heels", where a wedge made of Plexiglass is designed to give the impression that the wearer is walking on air, looks set to be a hit with shoppers.

Each piece will come with a label telling the wearer which year and from which collection the garment originates from. "Everything has been created from the original sketches and cut as they were originally seen on the catwalk," explains a representative from team Maison Martin Margiela. "There were some compromises on materials and price. So what was originally a fur coat is now a faux fur coat and so on."

Belgian designer Margiela founded the label in 1988 in Paris. He studied at the influential Antwerp Royal Academy before going on to assist Jean Paul Gaultier. In contrast to the "star designer" behaviour of his peers, Margiela created an enigmatic persona for himself. He wasn't photographed, he didn't take catwalk bows and he only gave interviews via fax. Between 1997 and 2003 he also designed the women's collections at Hermès. It is reported that the designer left the brand he created during 2009.

Despite being responsible for some of fashion's most extreme statements, including a jacket made of pen lids, clothes sprayed with mould or cardigans crafted from bin bags, the label's overall aesthetic has been popular with both the high street and other contemporary designers. Ideas, such as wonky hems, exaggerated volumes, experiments with masculine-feminine tailoring and exposed stitching, all central to the brand, have been particularly influential across the fashion spectrum.

The idea of bringing the label's groundbreaking concepts to a new audience via H&M is a particularly savvy idea. In 2011, Versace's H&M range injected new buzz into the label while bringing with it new customers. Collaborations with Anna Dello Russo, Marni and Karl Lagerfeld have also been a success. A spokesperson for Margiela explains: "When Martin Margiela was at the house, he designed something separately for a French catalogue called Trois Suisse. So really from the beginning there has always been the idea that we want as many people as possible to know what we do."