stockholm fashion week: the local firm
(images via mbfws)
over the past several seasons of covering stockholm fashion week, i’ve come to view the local firm (see s/s 2011, a/w 2011, s/s 2012) as a kind of swedish rag & bone, a little grungy, appreciating mash-ups, and eternally edgy, with something of an active sportswear bent and a plethora of layers. one gets the feeling the designers appreciate a good scouring of thrift or vintage shops for a piece that’s almost ugly, seeing how well they can work abstract or strange ideas into their lineup, how much play they can get from an idea most wouldn’t initially go for, to say nothing of conceive of in the first place. in short—a lot about the styling, but those labels are finding themselves getting quite far these days, so they’re hardly worth sneezing at, however superior i like to fancy myself.
anyway, for the house’s a/w 2012 range, the swedish site fashion weeks noted that there was a sort of “(r)einterpreted grunge,” vibe going on, while “(m)odern dancers were positioned in a scaffold, to move form [sic] their bodies into shapes as the models were walking down the runaway [sic].”and damernas spoke with designer axel nyhage, who explained that the collection was (trans.) “called ‘Tracey Emin and London suburb chic’, and is inspired by London’s suburbs and the 1990s. The collection is slightly more glamorous than before, and we work with the feeling of throwing on a [jacket] over paint clothes and running out into the London night.” he also added that “(w)e fasted in the London culture long ago and chose to rummage further in these hi-low contrasts…We have been spinning around there, and hooked on art and culture, and the struggling artists.”
when looking closer, i feel like the collection, which was set to the strains of the chemical brothers, has some common ground with the recent cheap monday show, which also obliquely referenced the nineties grunge era, and rodeo—correctly, i think—reflected that (trans.) “TLF is moving on a thin line between show and commercial, in which the thinking audience looking for attitude, but not too much,” meaning perhaps that they’re in a slightly more avanty space than cheap monday, but not by much. they also went on to describe the collection itself: “The jeans, perhaps the most well known by now, take second place to the dull gray in soft fabrics that are interspersed with touches of paint, metallic and leather. The bomber jackets are still there, maybe more in their natural environment than ever, hung over metallic blouses and hoodies.”
unlike what we’ve been seeing from a lot of designers for the upcoming winter, the local firm did make some efforts to address cold weather dressing, with a lot of comfy-cozy knits, oversized sweatshirts, and jackets (there was plenty of love for the interplay of textures between denim, jersey, and leather within the collection) thrown over some of the dainty little frocks. and elle pointed out, rather humourously, that the vibe encapsulated a (trans.) “gray scale industrial techno girl with layer upon layer-esteem.” it was a bit of a different aesthetic from some of the lean, paper-thin knit sportswear they embraced last season, but for it, fresher and more interesting. i like seeing the local firm going to the ground and getting some dirt under their fingernails. i think that’s where they’re most comfortable (see some additional images at contributor magazine).
(check out a short collection video here)
