Tired of waiting for endless talk of change to actually spur action, the Swedish Fashion Council (SFC) drew a line in the proverbial sand and took a stand for change in the industry, establishing Fashion X last year as a way to move away from market-centric shows and focus on designers and other ways of understanding the industry. “If we look into Fashion Week, it’s [about] events connected only to fashion, and what we try to do with Fashion X is also connect fashion to culture," SFC CEO Jennie Rosén told Vogue Runway.
The second edition of the event, which gathers fashion folk from across the globe in Stockholm, took place last week. In four jam-packed days in Stockholm, guests listened to talks (some in collaboration with Dazed) on diversity, emerging talent support, Gen Z, forestry, and the secondary market. They enjoyed African cuisine and locavore fare (who knew how versatile mushrooms could be?), and viewed, thanks to Market Art Fair, the work of contemporary Swedish artists in SEB’s unused bank vault. Wallets were emptied at Acne Studios Archive, and outerwear brand Klättermusen outfitted guests for a nature hike—all in an effort to put the human back into the fashion system.
According to its official mission statement, the SFC (which is owned by the Swedish Trade Federation) aims to “accelerate the transformation of the global fashion industry” and “establish Sweden as the global leader of the industry’s new era.” As it happens to be the case that Stockholm Fashion Week (organized by Stockholm Fashion Association) is on hiatus, and because Fashion X doesn’t follow the traditional show format, it’s awfully tempting to describe this happening as a Fashion Week alternative; but that’s not really the point. The goal of SFC is broader and more far-reaching. “Fashion weeks support mostly a linear system connected only to sell more products, but if we’re looking into how we’re going to transform the industry, we need to put fewer garments on the markets,” SFC CEO Jennie Rosén told Vogue Runway. And, we need to take more time with things. Fashion X is, essentially, a slow fashion event.
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The dazzling opening night event took place in Stockholm City Hall. The Nobel banquet is held in the building’s Blue Hall; SFC held its dinner upstairs in the Gold Hall, a room decorated with 18 million mosaic pieces in Byzantine style, where earlier this year, Max Mara hosted a fete after showing its Midsummer-inspired collection. The 2023 Swedish Grammi nominees, Johnny and Sammy Bennett of Deki Alem gave a rousing performance before a crowd that included H&M creative advisor Ann-Sofie Johansson, the activist rapper Silvana Imam, who is currently starring in Hamlet in Stockholm, and Drain Gang’s Ecco2K, who made a cameo at Mowalola for spring 2024. In the golden glow it felt like Stockholm was starting to come alive again.
Sweden’s “blue chip” and minimal brands such as Acne Studios, Toteme, House of Dagmar, and Filippa K (which is celebrating 30 years in business) took a back seat, allowing a new, perhaps more expressive, generation to stand in the spotlight.
The societal make-up of Sweden has changed dramatically since the City Hall was built 100 years ago. Today about 20% of the population has roots outside of the country. SFC’s first diversity report indicates that the fashion industry has a long way to go in reflecting the country’s new demographics. At the same time the collective mindset so characteristic of Sweden is being applied in new ways. One of the results is a broader understanding of what Scandinavian fashion can look like—beyond minimalism.
-ISM (I See Myself), COLLECTIVE FASHION AND EDUCATION
Angelo da Silveira, a Togolese-Swede, has been leading the way, using his brand Die Monde, and his micro factory Atelje Unitex, as platforms to lift up others. That’s an approach also at play at -ISM a collective headed by Banna Kidane, who is a cofounder of Changer’s Fashion, which seeks to provide education and opportunities in the industry. ISM, which stands for I See Myself, is a kind of manifestation. During Fashion X, the brand presented the capsule collection of its first guest designer, Samantha Esfandiari, who will own the rights to the work she made—raw yet fragile minimal pieces in black and white on the brand-set theme of Phantom of the Opera. This was a sartorial amuse bouche, ISM’s first ready-to-wear collection will launch next year.
The underground setting of the presentation seemed symbolic. “Basically when we [immigrants] come to Sweden from different countries, we are usually cramped up in the suburbs, in the U.S. it is the opposite. [Our suburbs are] the inner city. So we are cramped up in these high-rise buildings…this is the environment that we usually are in, these Brutalist types of designs and architecture that we’re from, that’s where we usually draw inspiration.”
UNIFROM TAKES TO THE STAGE WITH FRAGRANCE AND MUSIC
The starting point for Haisam Mohammed’s fragrance company Unifrom are the smells that mingle in the staircases of those suburban housing projects. Its aromas, translated in essential oils, speak of cultures from all over the globe, and break with the tradition of floral-based scents. The latest addition to Unifrom’s offerings of scents—all of which come in a sleek, roll-on tube—is Winter Saga, which Mohammed is calling a crowd-sourced scent, explaining: “I asked a thousand people from around the world what winter smells like for them. I gave them the opportunity to answer me, and now they have become the co-creator of this perfume.” This entrepreneur has roots in the city’s scene and it was on the dance floor that he raised the money to be able to pursue his dream. Mohammed related his story at a lunch he hosted at Musikaliska, built in 1878, with a live accompaniment of jazzy instrumentals and vocals. “I wanted to go back to the first place where I sold these perfumes [ a club called Södra Teatern],” he explained. “It’s not this venue, but it looks kind of like this [one], so that’s why we are here. But also it’s that this is so far away from where I was born or where Uniform came from. So I wanted to bring that in. And another aspect of it was also that I
m super inspired by culture and by music.”
TUTTOLENTE MAKES A STATEMENT WITH STREETWEAR
Music is also central to the Tuttolente collective, which speaks directly to a new generation, one raised on (Swedish) hip-hop and rap. The brand, which produces mainly hoodies, sweats, and polos with the MT logo (initials that stand for midnight, empty, or something else that one of the founders didn’t want to reveal), fills a gap in a market where local streetwear seems nonexistent. The Tuttolente show included a collaboration with Swedish model Alma Corbic, who has walked for the likes of Bottega Veneta and Christian Dior, and has her own line of air-sprayed garments, Shamo Gear. She left aside the cute characters she often paints to focus on abstract patterns for this project. This is one of several collaborations the model has done with the collective and she was given a free hand to do as she wanted. Asked about how she sees Tuttolente, Corbic had this to say: “I think this style that Tuttolente has, it represents more the style [of] the suburbs—and not only in Swedish suburbs, I would say more in maybe the UK or Marseilles in France. What I like about Tuttolente,” she continued, is that “Sweden is very segregated when it comes to the youth; everyone is divided in groups with styles, like some people are posh, some people are street wear, some people are this, and I like that Tuttolente is a mix of everything. You get confused.”
SILVER STARS: ALL BLUES, LOUIS ABEL, SIADDS ATELIER
All Blues invited guests to its store to get up close and personal with its Peter Do collaboration with for spring 2024. Cofounder Jacob Skragge met Peter Do in New York some lime ago, and started working with the New York–based designer last year, using thin silver tubes almost like rope, and tied into necklaces and bracelets. There were simple rings and ear hoops as well. Louis Abel’s hammered and wavy Aurea ring was spotted on several fingers. The brand, which is part of SFC’s talent incubator program, was founded by Jimmy Kamhieh Loutfi, a mechanical engineer-turned-jeweler, whose name will be familiar to avid followers of street style. His chic other half (the pair recently became engaged) is Hanna MW. People were also talking about the well-priced silver and gem pieces that the stylist Richard Ntege aka Monsieur Richy makes for his own brand Siadds Atelier.
EYTYS, OUR LEGACY, and AVAVAV ENTERTAIN
Gilded grills and tooth jewels flashed at every event. Even Eytys cofounder Max Schiller, who invited Fashion X invitees to his home for nibbles, sported one. Our Legacy revealed its new collaboration with Emporio Armani (a first for the Italian brand) at its Workshop store, and Avavav’s creative director Beate Karlsson and CEO Johanna Blom—this is the Florence-based brand whose viral shows in Milan have featured falling models and wardrobe malfunctions—invited everyone to the cinema. “It’s between fashion weeks and this is usually the time that we go into ‘hibernation’ with the brand, focusing on our collections, the next sales season and just general catching up. So, we couldn’t justify doing something that took too much time from the team, so we had this idea of a movie that never starts. We thought it was funny framing it as this grand movie premiere, so we invited people to Stockholm’s most beautiful cinema, Capitol,” Karlsson told me. Like Franco Moschino, the designer has a keen awareness of some of the absurdities of the industry and isn’t afraid to take them on with irony and humor.
MAGNIBERG LAUNCHES LOUNGEWEAR
Just in time for cuffing season, Bengt Thornefors and Nina Norgren expanded their bedding line to include some loungewear pieces. Thornefors is an Acne and Saint Laurent alum, and the line up includes lace pajamas, and others made from the same striped cottons as the brand’s sheets, as well as essential slip dresses. Whether these pieces are bar-to-bed or bed-to-bar is up to the wearer.
MAIN NUÉ DOES RAD REPAIRS
Local label Main Nué, an upcycling brand with a focus on repairs, held a make-do-and-mend workshop during Fashion X. This editor had her own checked Main Nué bag revamped with a new bow placement and some extra pendants crocheted on the spot.
PETRA FAGERSTRÖM COMES HOME FROM HYÈRES
You might have noticed that the word minimalism has been little used in this story. The brands currently participating in the SFC talent Incubator represent a new generation which idolizes John Galliano and Alexander McQueen, and who, not unexpectedly, are reacting against the minimalism they grew up with. Petra Fagerström, who just won big at the Festival d’Hyères, is one example. Her lenticular prints and outerwear speak to her heritage in an expressive way. And as she draws on her family’s dramatic history, a more personal one as well.
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HODAKOVA HOSTS A HOMECOMING DINNER
One of the points the SFC wanted to make with Fashion X is that fashion’s value is not only related to commerce. “If we’re looking into how we’re going to transform the industry, we need to put fewer garments on the market, and then fashion as an expression and culture will have a bigger impact,” said Rosen. You could see that at work at Ellen Hodakova Larsson’s dinner in the copper tent in Stockholm’s Haga Park that exuded the same kind of medieval fairy-tale charm that the designer was pursuing in her first runway collection for spring 2022.
We often speak about designer’s worlds, which are largely communicated through catwalks and campaign imagery, but here the connection was literal and immersive. Hodakova filled the space with the people who matter in her universe, starting with Baba Stiltz, who did the music for her show in Paris and has a fabulous new album, Paid Testimony, out. There was a vocal and guitar solo by Isak Sundström, and an astounding written word performance, “Bright/Sexy Prospects” by Elis Burrau, that was, he explained, “built around (or like a dramatization of) four poems” from his poetry book Red Days from 2017 (translated to English by Henry Song).” Sitting across from this editor was the sculptor Fabian Bergmark Näsman, whose spiky creations have caught the attention of Rimowa and Porsche and who exchanged a steel door handle he design for a pair of Hodakova’s pointy pants from fall 2023.
This kind of creative exchange isn’t about monetization, trade, or acquistion; it is focused on community, friendships, and shared experiences that make memories. All the ingredients that are said to contribute to happiness, in fact. In order for fashion to be gentler on the planet, we all need to search for a spot between commerce and creativity that can be marked with an X. It’s an idea that fits into the Swedish concept of lagom (not too little, not too much), and it’s a reminder that, after all, fashion is by and for people.
