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Monthly archives: January 2011

Stockholm fashion week begins

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My Comme des Garçons shoes will stand both the scrutiny and the Swedish winter weather.

Today Stockholm Fashion Week begins (or, as it is really called: Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Stockholm). It has come a long day since I started going to fashion shows in Sweden. It is centralised and organised, and crucially, it is not spread out over ten days (as it sometimes were in the past), but squeezed into just three days.

The nice thing about Sweden’s fashion week is that is friendly and nice and there aren’t hoards of fashion-crazed Bryanboy copies banging on the door and trying to get in (which in a way is fun, but let’s just say it’s a bit more relaxing to go to the shows in Stockholm). In fact, the worst show I’ve ever been to was a Giorgio Armani show in Milan where people actually ran as if at a rock concert to get hold of the few standing seats left. I’m glad I won’t be running this week.

You still have to dress up though, but in a country which isn’t home to any big luxury companies, you won’t see the fashion crowd wearing AW 2011/2012 Prada anytime soon. In fact, I’d be surprised if I saw Prada’s spring collection.

There’s just one little problem: the Swedish winter weather. Too cold and too icy, I always feel forced to pile on layer after layer, opting for warmth rather than fashion points. At least this year I have a pair of Comme des Garçons boots, which are both suited for snow and fashion scrutiny.

Then there’s my Jil Sander coat… oh, who am I kidding? I’m going to look smashing.

For the whole schedule for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Stockholm, click here.

Daniel Björk - Fashion

January 31, 2011

Beckmans takes on couture

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Cueing outside NK.

Last night, Sweden’s foremost school for fashion design, Beckmans, opened the exhibition Something else – Visions of Couture, in cooperation with NK department store in Stockholm. The theme was meant to be an challenge to a fashion world more and more revolving around fast fashion, low-cost clothes and factory-made garments – all things which might be great for the average customer but which for a fashion designer with dreams of being something more than a skilled worker come across as somewhat depressing.

A jazz band played, drinks were offered and I met up with my fellow fashion blogger Agnes Braunerhielm and her posse of fashion-obsessives. We discussed the fact that haute couture these days seem to be created for an internet audience, something which favours spectacular shows in the vein of John Galliano, whereas couture, originally was a certain level of service, the ultimate luxury.

Dress by Anna Svensson

Top by Emmelie Karlström

Many of the students had gone for the spectacular and the craft-intensive and the result was often very special as you can see from the pictures. Was it wearable and covetable? Perhaps it depends on who you are; these were demanding clothes.

Still, this made for a refreshing evening. Swedish fashion needs a bit of craziness and fantasy. Even someone whose ambition it is to create fast fashion will benefit from something as irreverent, impossible and beautiful as these clothes. When they work at Cheap Monday, that creativity might not turn out a dress inspired by samurai uniforms, but it might help create a new jeans design.

Dress by Madeleine Vintback

Shoe by Madeleine Vintback

Together with the clothes there were also short fashion films created by the students of marketing and publicity at Beckmans. You can watch all of these films at the Beckmans homepage.

Daniel Björk - Fashion

January 28, 2011

How I discovered fashion and learned to love Ann-Sofie Back

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Here I am, on the verge of discovering fashion. And no, the Italian guy was my friend, nothing else, despite appearances.

How does anyone discover fashion? I grew up in Borås, the old textile centre of Sweden. Maybe that has something to do with it? But, in reality, I hardly knew anyone who worked in the business. My brother’s girlfriend’s mother worked for Ted Lapidus, but that’s about it and to be fair, Borås was mainly a textile hub in the 1950s.

In my teens I started reading magazines such as The Face and i-D. I remember a discussion I had with my friends about what the people working at these hipster havens would be wearing. Now I know they probably just wore jeans and T-shirts like everyone else.

Still what pushed me in the direction of fashion was actually going abroad and studying for a year in Italy. At the time, the late 1990s, Stockholm and Sweden had only started becoming the trend hub it is today. People were more interested in white labels (12” vinyl) than designer labels.

In Italy I was confronted with a culture saturated with fashion. Style was everywhere and people knew what you were wearing even when they couldn’t see the brand name. It was a completely foreign concept to me.

Coming back to Sweden I realised that things were very different here. But something else was in the air as well. There seemed to be a growing interest in how to dress, in the joy of fashion, and also in the meaning of style. Soon I was writing about the new crop of Swedish designers, people like Ann-Sofie Back, Lovisa Burfitt and Carin Rodebjer, who were all starting out at that time.

I’ve seen many designers come and go, but there was something different with these three. To them, fashion was enough in itself, and they didn’t try to disguise it as something else (design, graphic design, art). They had a pride in fashion which previous Swedish fashion devotees had not been able to muster. Along with them a new generation of photographers and stylists came on to the scene and new edgy magazines started pushing the mainstream women’s titles towards a more fashion-centric approach. It was like a fashion education.

Sometimes I look back in amazement at how quickly Sweden went from a fashion phobic nation to the trend-conscious country it is today. Heritage and tradition goes a long way, but change can also happen very quickly.

I feel quite blessed to have lived through this change, because unlike the younger generation I know what Sweden was like before the ubiquitous fashion bloggers, style sections and fashion personalities of today. In some ways it was gentler and more fun – because it was more amateurish – but on the whole it’s nice to be able to talk about Acne Jeans and Maison Martin Margiela (even though the company isn’t Swedish) without having to explain what they are.

Daniel Björk - Fashion

January 26, 2011

Un-Swedishness

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Last Friday, Martin Bergström started off Swedish fashion week a little bit early (it’s on between January 31 and February 2) with a presentation at Wetterling Gallery. He’s never been afraid of patterns, dear Martin, in fact, they are his strength (as shown last year when he created the ‘UFO ant’ pattern for renowned design brand Carl Malmsten).

As you can see from the picture, he’s not afraid of colour either. Also, his clothes are not exactly minimalist, thereby diverging quite radically from the image people have of Swedish fashion.

I wrote in the presentation that I think the strength of Sweden’s fashion lies in it “being accessible without becoming boring”. By that I mean that its success stems from this. But Bergström, together with a few others I am sure I will have reason to come back to (such as crafts-obsessives Sandra Backlund and Helena Hörstedt) shows that Swedish fashion design is other things as well. Backlund won the fashion category at the Hyères festival in 2007, proving that Swedish fashion can compete also in areas that are more about traditional luxury and craft.

In fact, this is the next step for Swedish fashion designers. I’m sure there will come more brands, which manage to capitalise on that alluring mix of moderate pricing and stylish clothes that has been so successful, but in order to be a real player, Sweden’s fashion scene also has to bring something new and interesting to high fashion.

There is of course another possibility. The cool and well-priced fashion offered by Swedish designers could be more attuned to the way contemporary consumers dress, and it could also be the manner in which Sweden is participating on the international fashion scene.

But as a fashion person, as a fashion lover and fashion journalist, you want more. You want Swedish fashion to not only take the safe route, but also the one less travelled.

Daniel Björk - Fashion

January 24, 2011