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Stockholm Fashion Week is relaunching as a fully fledged physical showcase on 2 to 5 June after a six-year hiatus, with backing from the Swedish government.
The industry was shocked when Stockholm Fashion Week was abruptly cancelled — primarily on financial grounds — in July 2019, less than two months before it was due to take place. Since then, there have been some smaller iterations of the fashion week, including some digital editions during 2020 and 2021. Under owner and organiser the Association of Swedish Fashion Brands (ASFB), Stockholm Fashion Week returned to a hybrid physical-online format in 2022, but it was a low-key affair that consisted mostly of studio visits and a few live shows.
Now, Stockholm Fashion Week is being fully rebooted by the ASFB with the aim of offering local fashion talent a platform through which to target international buyers and editors. For the first time, it is backed by the Swedish government through the Ministry for Foreign Affairs (the amount of funding provided has not been disclosed).
There will be a renewed focus on attracting international visitors: participating brands have been invited to curate a hospitality guest list, with the Swedish Institute and Business Sweden enabling a programme for buyers, and Patriksson Group for press. The list of brands and schedule will be announced soon.
As part of the plans, ASFB is launching a programme to support emerging designers to show at fashion week, called STHLMFW Front.
Here, ASFB director John-Jamal Gille shares more on how Stockholm Fashion Week has evolved.
Vogue Business: Tell us about the rebooted Stockholm Fashion Week — what’s changed?
I was hired three years ago to lead Stockholm Fashion Week — I joined in April 2022 and we delivered a fashion week that August. After that, it was very clear that the event needed to be completely restructured.
Something that is changing now is that we do not produce shows for the brands showing on-schedule. It used to all be held in one space, but now we’re helping the brands open up venues that haven’t been used before, or we help them with the teams that they need or any other kind of support that might be useful. And our focus instead is on making sure the international guests in attendance are those that the brands want. Stockholm was always great at consumer-facing PR, at branding and spectacle, but the buyer part was kind of missing.
Vogue Business: Why is this the right time to bring it back?
We have a lot of great brands that need to get out into the world, because Sweden isn’t a big enough market on its own. The options they have right now are Copenhagen, Paris and maybe London or Berlin. Toteme showed in New York, but that was for one season. In Copenhagen, you may have two or three Swedish brands on the schedule; in Paris, even fewer that really get to cut through the noise. ASFB has about 50 members, and there’s not enough slots at other fashion weeks for all of them.
Vogue Business: Scandinavian fashion is often viewed as a unified force. Were there ever discussions with the other Scandi fashion weeks about consolidating into a single event? What makes it important for Sweden to maintain its own distinct fashion platform?
A collaboration with Copenhagen — or Oslo or Helsinki — has been on the table before, from what I understand, and it would be nice if it happened in the future. But we do have a healthy competition when it comes to our own individual industries. There’s no animosity, it’s just that we need to look out for our own economies. Let’s say Sweden has 30, 40 brands that could do great runways and presentations — you only have so many hours in a week. And Denmark is also growing its list of brands that have that same kind of pedigree. All countries have great talent, and these talents need to have platforms where they can be seen and go out into the world.
Vogue Business: How is Stockholm Fashion Week planning to incorporate eco-friendly practices and promote sustainable fashion among participating brands?
We call sustainability a ‘hygiene factor’ nowadays — it is extrinsic to the way Swedish brands operate. For example, Peta emailed us and asked us if we were willing to sign off on a fur or exotic leather ban. And we were like, sure, because no brands do that anymore. It’s preaching to the choir a little bit. So we think that, for fashion week, we don’t have to put a great focus on that subject because our brands already have that ambition. Sustainability is so ingrained in the Swedish fashion industry that if you don’t do it, people will look at you very strangely.
Vogue Business: So you don’t feel there’s a need for minimum sustainability requirements or something along those lines, as they have in Copenhagen?
We feel like that is not a good long-term solution to making sure brands align with the 2030 goals and the textile strategy from Europe. It is very important that sustainability becomes ingrained in our business practices. So we try and exemplify that with another programme we do outside of fashion, which we call Swedish Threads; it brings together design students, sustainability students and economic students to come up with solutions to sustainability problems. We think if you’re going to really try and impact and make a change for sustainable and responsible fashion, it is important that it’s not focused on an event and more so the entire business practice.
Vogue Business: What is your vision for the future of Stockholm Fashion Week?
For us, it’s about producing something that is expected of an international fashion week. The ideas that we’re putting in place aren’t unique in the world, but they’re necessary for Swedish fashion.
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
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