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From Feben in London and Hodakova in Paris, to Rave Review and Avavav in Milan, sophomore members of the Swedish Fashion Council’s SFC[Incubator] were some of the most exciting young names on the Spring/Summer 2024 fashion calendar — hoping to follow in the footsteps of the country’s established players, like Acne Studios and Totême. Now, the next generation of Swedish fashion talent is on the move, and ready to redefine what it means to be a Scandi brand.
Three emerging labels that joined the SFC[Incubator] in August will present their vision for the future of Swedish fashion this week with their first ever runway shows or presentations, at the Swedish Fashion Council’s second SFC[X] event: streetwear brand Tuttolente, yet-to-launch luxury womenswear label Petra Fagerström, and jewellery brand Louis Abel. They’re each vastly different, showcasing the range of local talent. They’ll meet press and buyers from around the world who are in town for the SFC’s event, which will also feature talks, presentations, screenings and evening events hosted by Swedish brands, including labels Our Legacy and Eytys.
“Our incubator talents have had a busy season, and although we are incredibly proud to see some of our established talents showcasing during international fashion weeks, we are committed to providing individual growth and development for our new talents,” says SFC CEO Jennie Rosén. “We recognise the importance of offering personalised guidance and resources to help them along the way.”
Louis Abel: Engineering jewellery
Louis Abel was founded in a garage in 2020 by Jimmy Kamhieh Loutfi. For SS24, Kamhieh Loutfi will present its latest collection and host a breakfast in that same garage where it all began.
Kamhieh Loutfi started out his career aged 20 as an engineer, spending six years designing complex parts and components for manufacturing automotives and textiles. When a friend gifted him a piece of jewellery, he realised that the metal he’d learned to manipulate could be used to convey emotion and tell stories, rather than just making machines. Today, Louis Abel has a full-scale jewellery production facility in his hometown of Borås, where sculptural gold and silver vermeil pieces inspired by natural landscapes like rock formations are made by hand, retailing from €120 to €5,000.
Moda Operandi picked up Louis Abel in 2020 shortly after its launch, after a buyer found it on Instagram. The brand is also stocked at Stockholm department store Nordiska Kompaniet, plus Harvey Nichols and Printemps, which it added during the SFC[X] showroom in Paris for SS24. Sales are expected to reach €400,000 in 2023.
Without any business experience or jewellery experience, before launching his label, Kamhieh Loutfi approached teachers at local colleges, shadowing them working or asking for advice, in exchange for lunch or “good company” in their workshops. A friend running a fruit delivery business had a small garage space for the designer to rent and he set up the studio, which will host tomorrow’s event.
Prior to joining the incubator, the designer was focused on direct-to-consumer sales. However, SFC has introduced him to international buyers and, with this week’s event, plans to help him scale wholesale further. That said, it’s crucial to scale responsibly in jewellery, he says. “Planning the event while working on orders and day-to-day operations has been a challenge,” he says. “And, with pieces being handcrafted, scaling up from one to 40 a day is difficult while maintaining quality. A machine can break in the middle of the day and what do you do? You have to find a solution and work overtime once it’s fixed.”
Petra Fagerström: On the precipice
After stints in design at Acne Studios and Balenciaga over the last five years, Petra Fagerström is yet to commercially launch her label with retailers. And yet, the industry is already betting on her success: she won the Chanel Atelier des Matières prize and Mercedes-Benz Sustainability Prize at Hyères last month, securing €30,000 funding combined across the prizes and access to Chanel offcuts and deadstock for her future collections. She made her first collection while still working at Balenciaga, using deadstock from LVMH-owned platform Nona Source.
Fagerström’s key technique is lenticular pleats, where an image or print is projected onto vertically pleated fabric. She was inspired by paper pleated postcards in Paris’s Palais de Tokyo gift shop and after a long process, figured out a way to mould fabric into pleats by hand without distorting the print or image when it shrinks in the mould. “It was a bit of a process to get to something that actually works,” she says. “I think there is a lot of room for improvement.”
Often, fashion prize winners go full throttle into show prep and wholesale. Fagerström is taking a slower approach while she develops her business plan. The designer is starting her masters degree at Central Saint Martins this month, which gives her and the SFC time to set up production before she launches commercially next year, with hopes to secure some retailers.
“Petra has had some remarkable wins at Hyères. We recognise her immense potential and are excited to help her launch her brand next year,” says Rosén. “While Petra completes her MA at Central Saint Martins, we are working closely with her to develop a strategic roadmap. We look forward to seeing where the future takes her.”
Fagerstrom sees herself in Paris, like her incubator predecessor Hodakova. “I think the aim would be Paris Fashion Week in the end. I’ve lived in Paris for five years. I think it’s one of the best places to, to be and to show.” Nonetheless, what unites Sweden’s young designers is their vision for a new Scandi fashion landscape, and Fagerström was keen to debut at home.
“There’s a real energy in Stockholm now, so I want to introduce myself in Stockholm, meet press and buyers and also build visibility in my native country,” Fagerström says. “I think it’s easy to kind of run away and go to Paris or London and miss out on what your home also has to offer. Because I think Swedish fashion has been connected to minimalism for a long time. It’s been boxed into something that actually it s not anymore.”
Tuttolente: From club to runway
Swedish streetwear label Tuttolente is another brand breaking the Scandi mould. The first DTC streetwear brand on SFC’s roster, it will present its first-ever runway show tomorrow evening at a warehouse space in Northern Stockholm.
In some ways Sweden’s answer to London’s Corteiz or Vienna’s Rare Humans, the brand started out in 2016 under another name, ETS Clothing, when its founders Antonio Calderon, Arman Cinkitas and Jónatan Kjartansson were in their late teens. Victor Nestius, who also runs the brand, was added to the mix shortly thereafter. ETS rebranded as Tuttolente in 2019, when co-founder Cinkitas was a club promoter, with creative friends from Stockholm’s club scene working for free to model and shoot to get things off the ground.
It’s known for its signature “MT” logo tracksuit (which stands for midnight) priced from €50-€200, sold via drops and promoted on social media or with oversubscribed pop-ups in Stockholm. The brand is run by a diverse team, including its three founders, newer co-founder, resident artist DR and 10-20 collaborators who regularly help with photography, modelling and production. Its campaigns provide insight into the youth of Sweden today, which Kjartansson felt was lacking in the landscape.
“That’s our aim, to redefine the type of brand that comes out of Sweden,” he says. “We’ve seen a lot of the same kind of Scandinavian style, which is sleek and modern. We’re proud to stand for something different because that doesn’t represent our Stockholm or our Sweden.”
Tuttolente is part of the new ‘On The Rise’ section of the SFC[Incubator], for brands that are further along but need support scaling and launching new categories. With the help of SFC, they are ready to move into more high-end pieces, to complement their bestselling logo tracksuits and T-shirts with new categories like tailoring. However, without formal training, they needed help from SFC to find suppliers and meet the high-end fashion buyers and press. From their DTC business, sales are expected to hit around €200,000 this year, doubling on the previous year.
The 500-capacity show will present a ready-to-wear collection with some showpieces and fewer logos than its usual drops. The show is being advertised on social media like its previous pop-up events, to build anticipation among the community. Unlike the other shows on the SFC[X] event programme, it’s open to the public, with Kjartansson expecting hundreds of the brand’s fans to show up and try and bag a first-come, first-served seat. The planning has been more challenging than a regular in-person drop event. “It’s not just find a venue and hire a DJ this time,” Kjartansson says. “The sheer scale of everything surprised us.”
Key takeaway: Sweden’s young creative talents are unique labels, each striving to diversify the output and representation of the local fashion industry. With their debuts, they’re hoping to shine a light on Stockholm’s creative power, introducing new definitions for what it means to be a Scandi brand, while scaling their businesses abroad with press and buyers.
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