Designers’ Nest is a nonprofit dedicated to helping fledgling Nordic talents fly. Each year 10 recent graduates from fashion schools in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden are selected. Ane Lynge-Jorlén, the organization’s director, heads a jury of industry experts who choose the winners. The competition, held on the opening day of Copenhagen Fashion Week, starts off this virtual season with an eye to the future.
This year’s winner is Idaliina Friman, the third-in-a-row graduate of Helsinki’s Aalto University to take home the prize of 50.000 DK (about $8,000).
Friman presented her bachelor of arts collection, for which she spun a narrative based on her great-grandfather’s life story. A Finn, he had been living in prosperity until the Finnish Civil War of 1918, when he was forced to flee alone to Lapland and adapt to a new culture. Friman imagined a Victorian noblewoman who “really tried to hold onto her former self,” but finally sheds her old identity for a new one, trading in fire-lit interiors with heavy draperies, tufted sofas, and dark-wood furniture for a wintery natural landscape. The beauty of Friman’s collection is how she works functional nylon (leftover material filled with recycled plastic) into padded 19th-century silhouettes that are at once sporty, romantic, and light. Moncler, take note.
Another prize went to Arttu Åfeldt, an Aalto graduate who played with waterproofing in a collection inspired by video games and school uniforms. The work of Friman, Elina Äärelä, Kristian David, and Ines Kalliala will be included in the upcoming “Future Nordic Fashion” exhibition at Prins Eugen Waldemarsudde museum in Stockholm.
