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Archive for Daniel Björk - Fashion

Daniel Björk thinks the strength of Swedish fashion lies in it being accessible without becoming boring.

The importance of being earnest

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A piece from Acne's pre-fall 2012 collection, showing that mid price fashion can be just as creative as luxury fashion. Photo: Acne

 

During the last decade luxury fashion prices have rocketed and what was once the upper end is now standard fare – a particularly embellished dress or jacket can cost €10000 and upwards. It’s prêt-à-porter with couture prices.

The Swedish market sees very little of this. There has been some Balmain sold in Stockholm, but should we look at Swedish brands they have almost in unison decided to occupy the middle ground. The Swedish fashion consumer is demanding in her own peculiar way. She wants trendy, fashionable clothes, but without having to pay premium prices. It is a winning formula internationally too – the mid price section is where all the action is at the moment in the fashion world and in a way it is an extension of the democratic vision of budget high street fashion, with the addition that these customers are more informed, more fashion-forward and a bit more willing to part with their hard-earned cash.

At the same time, many of the Swedish brands have realised they have to raise their price level abroad. What is mid price in Sweden comes across as budget on other markets – and not in a good way.

For many years there has been a discussion (in Sweden) about what Swedish fashion should be. I think the answer is pretty clear. While London is about talent and experimentation, Milan about luxury and Paris about creativity, Stockholm’s fashion week – officially called Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Stockholm – is about accessibility.

Personally, I believe the Swedish price points are just right for what anyone who isn’t extremely affluent should pay for good fashion, and sometimes I find that even Swedish mid price equals “overpriced”. But in general, you get a lot of fashion for the money. It comes across as honest and, especially now that luxury pricing is out of control, there is certainly a need for honest pricing.

After all, looking good shouldn’t be all about money.

Daniel Björk - Fashion

January 27, 2012

The case of the moustache

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Håkan Juholt and his moustache. Photo: Riksdagen

Today, in Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet, I write about the wife of the Swedish foreign minister, Anna Maria Corazza Bildt. In essence, my thesis is that she is a force of good in the Swedish fashion climate with her wild and daring style (a look that sometimes can go a bit overboard to say the least).

This also happens to be the day when the Swedish Social Democratic Party leader is resigning and so I came to think about Håkan Juholt (that’s his name) from a fashion perspective.

Many people have commented on his moustache. Some people from his own party criticised the focus on the bearded upper lip, pointing out that it was a “symbol of masculinity”, but most people saw the moustache as a sign of a less polished, more ordinary politician. He didn’t look like a banker, he didn’t look like he had been created in a PR firm’s lab like so many others. It gave him an air of joviality and honesty.

The Social Democratic Party in Sweden has a history of politicians becoming popular when they don’t come across as too suave. Former prime minister Ingvar Carlsson was portrayed as a shoe on humour show Helt apropå in the late Eighties and former speaker of the Swedish parliament, Birgitta Dahl, was played by a man sporting giant false teeth on the same show. I’d say that the show made both of them more popular. Ingvar Carlsson the shoe even became his “brand” and his acolytes started to call themselves “fotfolket” (literally “foot people” and Swedish for rank and file), wearing pins and T-shirts with Ingvar Carlsson, the shoe, drawn as a cartoon.

Surely, Håkan Juholt’s moustache could’ve worked the same magic? After all, when he was elected, people waved signs with a stylised moustache.

A few years ago I interviewed two Swedish political journalists who hade written a book about the style of politicians, a subject that is rarely touched upon unless someone’s handbag is a bit too luxurious or there’s a radical change in the look (like when former minister Sven-Otto Littorin suddenly appeared in public sporting a goatee). I remember one of the journalist, the left-wing Göran Greider, hoping for a politician just like Håkan Juholt. He believed there was an opening for someone that looked like he came from the countryside, someone who was more ordinary than posh, a politician that wasn’t too aware of his image. I had just asked whether politicians needed to become more aware of the way they looked in these media frenzied times.

That is still the question. Many people will probably see Juholt’s resignation as a sign that a politician can’t ignore the way he or she looks, but I think that in his case the issue was that people (and perhaps he himself) were too eager to make the moustache a part of brand Juholt.

When it comes to fashion and style politicians need to come across as genuine more than anything else. The problem with Håkan Juholt’s moustache wasn’t that he had one, but that people, including himself, tried to turn the moustache into a symbol of integrity. Last summer he proclaimed he wasn’t going to shave it off, thereby suggesting he wasn’t bowing to some perceived media pressure to streamline. But was there ever such pressure? I remain sceptical.

Daniel Björk - Fashion

January 21, 2012

The most glamorous night of the year

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I am back. With “I”, I mean Daniel Björk, who will be writing this blog together with Sabrina for a while. This is my report from last night’s “Ellegala”.

Even though I’ve been on the jury of the Guldknappen award there’s no denying that it is the annual Swedish Elle Awards that is the glamour-puss of the two. First of all, the setting in the luxurious winter garden in Grand Hotel makes for a great backdrop with it’s gilded interior and Versailles-like ambitions. It is also the industry awards in many ways, because Elle hands out awards for Photographer of the Year and Stylist of the Year. Read more » >>

Daniel Björk - Fashion

January 14, 2012

A question of shorts

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My summer look this year. Shorts it is!

Every year there is a big discussion (I’m using the term “big” loosely here) in Stockholm about whether it’s OK to wear shorts in the city. I’m a bit confused about this since men’s fashion has shown men in suit jacket and shorts for many seasons now, which is therefore a perfectly acceptable look. I myself have three pairs of Jil Sander shorts, one of them (I’m not kidding) in mint green leather.

My colleague at Rodeo, Johan Wirfält, wrote about this last year as a response to the editor in chief of King Magazine, Per Nilsson, who emphatically concluded it wasn’t OK to wear shorts in Stockholm city.

This year the discussion was taken up by the hipster site throwmeaway.se and both of them see the shorts taboo as a sort of anti-gay sentiment. It is just “too gay” to wear shorts as a man (because as Kristofer Andersson at Throw Me Away observes, this is a ban only of male bare legs).

I really couldn’t care less whether it is seen as gay or not gay to be a shorts guy, but we must be more precise here – it is not seen as gay to wear cargo shorts in the city, just a bit too casual for inner city life perhaps. Rather we are talking about tailored shorts and we are talking about very short shorts, showing quite a bit of leg.

Personally I’m definitely going for the short tailored shorts look this summer. I’ve already road tested my mint green leather ones (although admittedly they are a bit tricky to pull off) and is trying to find the right moment to don my “faux” double breasted suit jacket with matching shorts.

This is the last post from me for a while, but I hope I will see you sometime after summer. All the best – and don’t be afraid of the shorts.

Daniel Björk - Fashion

June 17, 2011

Swedish fashion publications

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An image from the book Nordic Women in Chanel. Photo: Peter Farago and Ingela Klemetz Farago

One way to get to know a country’s fashion scene is by reading the publications that come out of it. And with that I mean both magazines and books.

Back in the day, there used to be a magazine called Stockholm New, which turned more and more into a fashion publication as the years passed, but it is now defunct. There was also Bibel, the fashion mag that in many ways ignited interest in fashion in Sweden and made it “hip”. Had they been out today I would’ve told you to get a hold of them.

So what is out there these days? There are the big titles such as Swedish Elle, which together with Damernas Värld (and especially their “fashion only” title DV mode, which comes out three times a year) form the commercial nexus of Swedish fashion media. Perhaps we should add Plaza Magazine to this mix, which during the last decade has been constantly rising in stature.

These days, I mainly work with Bon Magazine, a quarterly magazine in Sweden and a biannual one internationally. I also write for Rodeo Magazine’s website and they are also doing a biannual these days, in Swedish though.

The closest we have to a Stockholm New would have to be Stockholm S/S/A/W which catalogues the collections each season.

On the men’s side there are mainly two titles, Café and King Magazine, both of them geared towards a mainstream audience.

When it comes to books there are a couple of books in Swedish that might be interesting, should you be able to read it. For a good overview of Swedish fashion writing, try Sexton svenska texter om mode, an anthology of 16 fashion articles, including two by yours truly.

Susanne Pagold used to write about fashion for Dagens Nyheter, the main morning paper in Sweden, and she wrote a book called De långas sammansvärjning (The conspiration of the tall), which is a very interesting time document when it comes to the slightly defensive and negative tone people used to employ when writing about fashion before the Noughties. For a counterpoint, Martina Bonnier’s Fashionista is a style guide from the editor-in-chief of Damernas Värld, and earlier this year, Sofia Hedström, my colleague at Svenska Dagbladet, released Modemanifestet: de stilsmartas handbok, a book about a global movement for using clothes more responsibly.

There are obviously photography books as well. Thomas Klementsson is a friend of mine but also a brilliant photographer and I wrote the foreword to his book Arkiv. Currently I’ve just rounded up work on a forthcoming book by Carl Bengtsson who has been working since the Seventies – photographs will be exhibited at Röhsska museet in Göteborg in September. These are only two recent ones. I could add the upcoming book with Chanel clothes and Nordic models which has been produced by Peter Farago and Ingela Klemetz Farago, and which also will spawn an exhibition at Fotografiska, opening on July 1.

So far I haven’t written a book myself, partly because I’ve never really been interested in writing a style guide or anything else that is supposedly commercial enough. But who knows, things might change… I did have a good idea the other day, but I’m not promising anything.

Daniel Björk - Fashion

June 14, 2011