Ellen Hodakova Larsson, a 2019 graduate of the Swedish School of Textiles, made her debut ahead of Stockholm Fashion Week, revealing her “Conventional Collection,” via a look book and short film.
The designer, whose practice is built around upcycling, had planned to do a show outdoors, but the pandemic put paid to that. Nature does have the lead role in Larsson’s trippy video, however. “I wanted it to be fun,” she said on a call. “I tried to make a puzzle that could tell this story and get the beauty of earth captured in some way.”
The framing of the video’s models, who were shot standing on boxes against a green screen, speaks to the separation and compartmentalization of the digital world. “The box is like a membrane of screens we’re watching through, where it becomes like a substitute for our need for realness,” noted Larsson. She described herself as a “project leader,” gathering many friends together on the film to create a real sense of community, one that perhaps mirrors her design process, which begins with assembling existing garments and deadstock fabric for transformation.
In the Hodakova universe pants become dresses, jackets take on exaggerated lengths, and curtains shape-shift into dresses. Asked why she named a collection that is so obviously avant-garde conventional, Larsson replied, “It is conventional clothes from the beginning; I’m just playing with them in another perspective. So it’s a deconstruction of the conventional.”
In that sense, her aesthetic sometimes veers close to that of Martin Margiela and Demna Gvasalia. But though Larsson is only just taking her first independent steps, she’s started to craft her own rather unconventional universe, one that is at least partly defined by fun. See, for instance, the painted toes on the outside of rubber boots.
Among Larsson’s motivations are encouraging individualism and out-of-the-box thinking, messages that have local and global relevance. She sees the fact “that everyone looks the same and follows the same pathway,” as a problem and wants to inspire people to be unique.
Hodakova looks are one-offs, but Larsson notes that her way of working follows a legacy passed down from her grandmother via her mother: self-sufficiency and problem-solving. Designers of this new generation don’t have the luxury to think only about aesthetics, they must fix what’s broken first. Still, Larsson chose to stick with fashion. Why? “I think it starts with my curiosity and my [interest] for solving problems or seeing a problem and trying to understand that reality,” she said. “I’m trying to analyze and understand what I have in front of me. That’s been a very natural pathway, I would say, the same with my curiosity and trying to understand how things can be, and rethink, and just have fun with it.”
