The Swedish clothing retailer Hennes adopted the name Hennes & Mauritz after acquiring Mauritz Widforss in 1968.
Erling Persson founded Hennes in Västerås in 1947 as a women’s clothing shop. The business expanded during its early decades, but it originally focused exclusively on women’s fashion. In 1968, Persson bought the Stockholm-based hunting and menswear retailer Mauritz Widforss.
The acquisition added men’s clothing to Hennes’s range and led to the combined name Hennes & Mauritz. The company later shortened the name in everyday branding to H&M, a form now used globally on stores, labels and corporate materials.
A common mix-up is to treat H&M as the company’s original name. It was not: the business began as Hennes, while the ampersand reflected the 1968 acquisition. The group subsequently expanded into children’s clothing, accessories, cosmetics and home products.