Loading

Tag archives for Ann-Sofie Back

30 years of Swedish Fashion

17 comments

Filippa K won the award in 1997 with this collection. Foto: Karin Smeds

For the last three years I have had the honour to sit on the jury for the most prestigious of Swedish fashion awards, the Guldknappen (Golden Button), which was instigated in 1981 by Damernas Värld (Ladies’ World), a Swedish fashion magazine for women.

This year is the 30th anniversary of the prize and no, I can’t tell you it goes to! But what I can tell you is that Nordiska Museet is holding an exhibition based on all the designers who’ve won the award over the years. You can see the list here, not exactly household names from an international perspective (although if you’re in the fashion business you might have heard of for example Jonny Johansson of Acne, Filippa Knutsson of Filippa K, Lars Nilsson who was head designer for Bill Blass and Nina Ricci, Ann-Sofie Back and perhaps Marcel Marongiu).

The interesting thing is that the award goes to a collection, not a designer life’s work, and therefore the collection represents Swedish fashion that particular year. Damernas Värld has been saving all of them for posterity, making Guldknappen a unique summary and survey of Swedish fashion and the times. In 2008 they were donated to Nordiska Museet where they form the basis for the exhibition..

Guldknappen 1981-2011 opens on June 10 and the idea is to try to show what it means to be a fashion designer beyond the glitz and the glamour. I’ve known many fashion designers who complain that the fashion world isn’t glamorous at all, so I guess this will please them.

Visitors will learn how fashion design is often a shoestring budget operation and hopefully this will earn designers some respect. After all, it’s even more impressing that they can create beauty without the means of an international luxury house at their disposal.

In August, this year’s winner will be announced together with the winner of the recently instigated Guldknappen for accessory design. See you at the party!

Daniel Björk - Fashion

May 26, 2011

In Sweden, women designers prove old clichés wrong

3 comments

A piece from Nhu Duong's graduation collection in 2008.

The stereotypical gay fashion designer is not that often found in Sweden these days. In fact, the most successful designers tend to be women, with some notable exceptions like Lars Wallin and Jonny Johansson at Acne (the latter who, if we are nit-picking, is not gay).

Not that I’m complaining. It’s nice to see that the overwhelming majority of female students in the design schools is reflected in the roster of successful designers as well.

In fact, the rise of Swedish fashion design during the Noughties was initiated by three women designers, all of whom are still designing. Lovisa Burfitt, Carin Rodebjer and Ann-Sofie Back all contributed something special to the scene, but shared (as I have already mentioned) a belief in fashion as a discipline and a form of expression.

Today the most interesting of the Swedish designers are women almost all of them. I’m talking about Sandra Backlund, who with her organic and futuristic knitwear showed that Swedish fashion design can be original, daring and reach an international audience. I’m also talking about Helena Hörstedt who might not be as well known as the former, but who has a lot in common with Sandra Backlund – they both have a very handicraft-based approach to clothes. To these to I’d also like to add Nhu Duong who marries the conceptual side of designers such as Ann-Sofie Back with the handicraft of Backlund and Hörstedt. (Sadly, Helena Hörstedt is not designing at the moment, taking a hiatus when becoming pregnant. But here’s hoping she will return soon. Sweden needs her.)

Most of the designers I admire in some ways design “against” the Swedish fashion norm, as a kind of reaction perhaps. I wrote about this in the catalog for the Swedish Institute’s fashion exhibition Swedish Fashion – Exploring a New Identity and you can read my thoughts here.

But in a more interesting way, these women show that the idea that women design practical clothes for themselves (while men who design for women are supposedly more interested in fashion as fantasy) is clearly mistaken. The incredibly intricate work of these designers cannot be described as wearable, even though these clothes definitely does transform the wearer into a beautiful walking piece of art. They prove that women designers are just as good at exploring the fantasy side of fashion as male designers have been.

Daniel Björk - Fashion

March 6, 2011

Swedish fashion abroad

5 comments

Ann-Sofie Back and her models at the end of the presentation of the autumn-winter collection 2011

When I started out in fashion Ann-Sofie Back was just a student at Central Saint Martins in London that the magazine I wrote for believed in so much that they put her on the cover of their final issue. Soon thereafter, her graduate collection was shot by Juergen Teller for Purple Magazine and Ann-Sofie Back was hailed as one of the ones to watch. This was in the early Noughties.

For a brief stint she showed in Paris but mainly she has remained in London, taking a break from showing once in a while. These days she seems to have found a way to structure her life and business that works – proper job at Cheap Monday; diffusion line BACK giving her a price point which works in Sweden; “proper” line Ann-Sofie Back Ateljé more focused.

You can tell this works just by looking at the clothes, which are more sophisticated, luxurious but also clearer in vision than I think they’ve been before.

I really thought it was a splendid collection she showed here in London on Sunday and while it was criticised by Tim Blanks at Style.com for being “unnecessarily severe”, he also said it was “positively esoteric” and compared her to Miuccia Prada.

Is it important for Swedish fashion to be seen at places like London Fashion Week? I sometimes think it would be good for Swedish brands to be subjected to the kind of competition and scrutiny you have on the international scene, but at the same time, the Swedish bubble also creates interesting stuff, like the menswear label Our Legacy which many think is the next big thing to come out of Sweden.

I know that I previously said that I believe the Swedish design identity needs to be broadened, but for a lot of brands there will naturally exist some kind of sensibility that is perhaps Scandinavian. Many small Swedish designers make their shoes in Argentina (because of an Argentinian woman living in Stockholm) and I’ve heard that the Swedish shoes for women are laughed at in the Argentinian factory and seen as frumpy-looking and ugly. This might make a lot of Swedish design uninteresting in latin countries, places with a warmer climate and more feminine design aesthetic.

At the same time, the woman of Swedish fashion is perhaps more on trend than ever before. The working woman look that evolved in the Seventies, and who has been brought back by designers like Phoebe Philo at Céline, Stella McCartney and Hannah MacGibbon at Chloé, fits very well with the Swedish mentality where women want to dress in a way that signals equality, independence, intelligence and natural beauty.

Acne is also a label which has recently started showing in London, in many ways marking a new era for the denim brand. The first real show at Kensington Palace last autumn was not so well received by fashion critics, in a way showing that the exoticism of Stockholm could work in your favour. It will be interesting to see how this added scrutiny changes Acne. In a way it is a question of identity that any company reaching this level faces: in what ways are you an international brand and in what ways are you still Swedish?

Daniel Björk - Fashion

February 23, 2011

Fashion Week Day One

2 comments

Whyred AW 2011

I can tell you right now, this is not a blog where I review the collections shown here at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Stockholm. I don’t know exactly what it will be about as I think a blog should be more organic and spontaneous than an article.

Yesterday, there was a lot of cheek-kissing (but admittedly less so than in other cities, since we Swedes hug a lot), there was a lot of champagne (everyone seems to be offering champagne before and sometimes after the show), there was a lot of nice clothes.

And let’s just stop there. The current fashion mood may be summarised as that Céline meets minimalism meets American Shelley Hack freshness meets disco – and that mood is something which works well for the Swedish fashion mentality. It’s just something that designers here always have in their scrap books and all of this meant that the shows felt quite strong.

It’s easy to see what will be adopted by the fashion crowd (let’s just say midi skirts, long skirts, wide trousers combined with long jumpers or coats), which makes for a very adult look, a nice departure after a decade of super young, leg showing fashion and teenage models.

Back AW 2011

I started the day at Max Factor Award finalist Ann-Sofie Back, who shows her diffusion line BACK here in Stockholm (while the mainline Ann-Sofie Back Atelier still shows in London). For anyone trying to understand the understated and intellectual side of Swedish fashion, Back is a good bellwether, mostly showing in black, grey, white – and this time also in emerald green.

Then off to Whyred where the men’s clothes impressed the most with their updated mod feel.

Whyred AW 2011

A quick bite at Berns (where most of the shows are held) and then Carin Wester, followed by Carin Rodebjer at Bukowskis around the corner.

Carin Wester AW 2011

Rodebjer’s show ended on a very upbeat note, with the designer, the team and all the models (dressed in colourful 70s inspired clothes) paraded down the catwalk to the sound of Abba’s Head Over Heels. The crowd seemed to love it.

Rodebjer AW 2011

Ending the day was Dagmar, with stern-looking models, dark-green velvet, futuristic shoes – and more champagne…

Dagmar AW 2011 shoes

This is where I dropped off. I’m expecting even more champagne and kisses today. I’m especially looking forward to the Cheap Monday show in the new Stockholm Waterfront Congress Centre.

Daniel Björk - Fashion

February 1, 2011

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

3 comments

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