Does the opening of the Chimi eyewear store on Grand Street in Soho create a Little Sweden or a Nordic Way? Hästens and Acne Studio are down the road, Toteme is around the corner, and Danish Ecco is on the corner of Broadway, after all.
Founded in Stockholm in 2016, Chimi is the brainchild of Charlie Lindström and cofounder Daniel Djurdjevic. The son of architects on his father’s side and designers on his mother’s, he studied microeconomics at his parents’ bidding, and has applied his math skills to entrepreneurship. In the store, Chimi’s always-available core collection is organized according to X and Y axes with styles arranged in rows by color options. At the start, he explained on a walk-through, “I wanted to create iconic styles without any big logos, and try to make the best possible product when it comes to quality.”
The next challenge was to find ways to create newness to complement the core collection. Lindström came up with a “labs” concept, in which special products are developed around different subcultures. Chimi x Koeingsegg—fronted by Yung Lean—tapped into car culture, while Lindström’s hook-up with Christer Fuglesang, “the first Swede in space,” focused on futurism. LVMH Prize winner Ellen Hodakova Larsson used excess Chimi lenses and frames to create looks and accessories for her spring 2025 show.
To commemorate the opening of the first US shop, a Chimi symphony was commissioned from the Swedish maestro Jacob Mühlrad. Visual harmony is created in the space through the use of curving parabolas that “were obviously a bit inspired by how we work with balance from the eyewear,” Lindström noted. There’s a U-shaped wall, an undulating seating area, C-shaped stools, and an overhead light with rounded edges that looks a bit like an eyeglass lens. A circular table and a cone-shaped column (which recall the kind of props that appear in Sheila Metzner photos for ’80s Vogues) are made of silicon in a pinkish color you might find in a pick-and-mix gummy candy mix.
As decorative as they are functional, these sort of Memphis touches offer a twist on more traditional Scandi minimalism. Not that there isn’t a sense of order and cleanliness to the space; after all, the components were made in Sweden and transported to the US, where Chimi’s business is growing. “I think that many New Yorkers, and a lot of people from the US, take inspiration from Sweden—and vice versa—so I feel like we are very connected to this market,” Lindström said.
The store is the fulfillment of a dream whose seed was planted back in 2014 when Lindström visited the Big Apple with his mother. “I told her [then] that to be a part of this energy and to walk around here would be a dream that I didn’t even dare to dream, so to say.” Fortune favors the brave.
