“FedEx are currently our best friends,” jokes Saif Bakir on a Zoom call. He was explaining how he and his wife and codesigner, Emma Hedlund, managed to create their fall menswear collection from Malmö, Sweden, with their staff in London and their factories in Italy and Portugal. Clearly the work from home revolution is real, and it can be liberating. In the past the pair didn’t feel they could work from their hometown, but “things have changed,” says Hedlund. “It’s so much easier to work from more of a remote place today. You don’t necessarily have to sit in London or New York.”
Last year the couple brought their baby home for a visit and got stuck in Sweden for months due to travel restrictions. The unplanned sojourn inspired their excellent spring lineup, a reflection on Swedish folk style. After returning to a deserted London, the pair decided to move back home for the foreseeable future.
The new fall collection builds off the previous one in that it’s inspired by Sweden, particularly the nature reserve near the couple’s home, though, as Hedlund notes, “It’s not a very outdoorsy collection.” At heart the couple are city slickers, and they imagined a fellow waking up in a sleeping bag and walking around outside. It’s “all about unplugging and escaping the screen; I think that’s been sort of the urge throughout [lockdown],” she says.
Bakir explains that the two looked back in history to trace the roots of the Swedes’ free-spirited connection to nature and found it in flower power. He notes that Allemansrätten, a law that allows Swedish citizens to roam on property public and private dates to the 1970s, a decade they reference in a mustard yellow, rust, and brown floral print. It’s used on a puffer and the hero piece, a side-zipping poncho with a tentlike shape. Flowers also bloom on intarsia knits; both iterations push against stereotypical masculinity.
Nods to sport and warmth (a concept many designers are cozying up to in Scandinavia) are present in a sophisticated bouclé anorak and a cleverly constructed jacket that looks as if it’s been made from an old carriage blanket. Sweden might be experiencing a deep freeze, but Bakir and Hedlund are turning up the heat from their new home/work address.
