For more than one hundred years, The Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg has been specialising in design and craft. One of many recurring initiatives is to arrange Röhsska fashion days, a yearly event that focuses on contemporary national and international issues in fashion.
— This year’s focus is on fashion as an artistic practice and sustainability. We are interested in getting insights into how young designers approach sustainability in integrated ways without compromising, for instance, aesthetics. We do this across four days of public program that invites designers, academics, and others for lectures and talks, says Jonas Fridén Kihl.
The days include a special exhibition, High Fashion Upcycled, that, together with Swedish Fashion Council and TEX! by Marketplace Borås, is welcoming four young designers who work with upcycling in different ways to the museum.
Ellen Hodakova Larsson founded the fashion brand HODAKOVA after graduating from the Swedish School of Textiles in Borås. She’s received a lot of global attention, including being a finalist in the Nordic talent incubator Designers’ Nest, for her experimental work with creating new pieces from existing textiles and second-hand garments.
Stockholm-based contemporary lifestyle brand AAJIYA aims to change the narrative of African fashion and empowers the multidimensional woman who embraces their full identity and freedom. Founder Maimuna Cole works with craftsmanship around a non-cliché ideology of what African fashion is by challenging — and undermining — stereotypes, aiming to change the narrative through rich colour patterns and textures from Africa.
Rave Review was founded in 2017 by fashion designers Livia Schück and Josephine Bergqvist. The brand focuses on sustainable fashion through remake and reuse of existing materials. The brand has been finalists of the prestigious LVMH Prize and were also selected to participate in Gucci Fest and Gucci Vault as some of the globally leading fashion talents.
In 2020, Louise Xin founded Scandinavia’s first ”non-purchase” couture clothing brand. The dresses are hand-sewn in Stockholm, mainly of upcycle or deadstock fabrics. Last fall, her first fashion show — dedicated to human rights — went viral and Xin also became the first recipient of the Fabric of Life Award at the international textile conference Next Textile.
— These four have all received international recognition and are producing uncompromising and contemporary fashion. They work with societal challenges in a way that does not compromise artistic ambitions and contribute to the definition of a new era for Swedish fashion, Fridén Kihl concludes.
Related Stories
