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Anders Berggren’s vacuum-packet jackets and mohair pants at the Beckmans School of Design’s knit show at the recent Stockholm fashion week.

So it has has once again come to its end: the subpolar fashion week of the industriously trend-conscious middle-classes...

Claes Britton | Feb 4, 2008 | 0 comments

Bigger, better, more professional and international for each new season — this proud trend was maintained with honor during the past fashion week here in Stockholm, or Sthlm Fashion Week by Berns, as it’s now called, with the art noveaux pleasure palace Berns i the city center as the dominant main scene. The twelve shows from last sesaon had been increased to no less than twenty-two at berns alone, with even more staged around town, including large-scale shows by trendy mainstream brands such as Acne, Filippa K and even Björn Borg. Interest from international medis also reached new levels, with some fifty or so visiting journalists from around the world. I myself was able to squeeze in a total of thirteen shows, though I missed a full day, and parts of the other three.

So what about quality? Well, to be honest, I must conclude that our fashion week remains typically Swedish both in its overall streety trendiness and in a certain caution and restrain i choice of colors and materials, cuts, etcetera, even if many of the designers nowadays wisely garnish their shows with outfits, accessories and details designed uniquely for the catwalk. There’s more than plenty of street, youthfulness, punk, rock’n’roll and London flying around, but little of elegance, glamour, sex or true extravagance. There’s no denying that a certain scent of aspriring, industrious, painfully trend-conscious middle-classes continues to permeate our fashion week...not to mention this myriad of young fashion bloggers that just keeps building in numbers...oh Lord, where does it end..?

Two of the higlights for me this season were Rodebjer and Carin Wester, both distinguished by their own subtly tasteful personal style, even if they could both be referred to the above mentioned categories. Our two young gifted and highly celebrated couturièrs Helena Hörstedt and Sandra Backlund — both of whom I´ve written about repeatedly before in this column — both showed fantastic new creations. However, this time they both lacked a quality that is just all too essential in the cruel world of fashion: the pleasure of the novelty (at least to me, having followed them ever since they were classmates at Beckmans School of Design). I think that the challenge for Sandra lies in applying here style and creative temper to other techniques besides knitting, while it must surely be time for Helena to relinquish her fixation with black and open up to color.

Best and most amusing of all during the entire week was, once again, the knit show by the second grade fashion students at Beckmans, presenting an abundant amount of free-flowing fantasy and fresh ideas (even though it was very clear that ex-students Hörstedt and Backlund are now important heroines at the school). My personal favorites were Kristina Lundsjö, with her equally simple, cool and original arm solutions (”they will be ripped right off by H&M”, as someone said), and Anders Berggren with his quite edgy and high-tech, yet sleek and elegant mens’ collection with mohair pants and vacuum-packed jackets.

I’ve said it before and will say it again: let us hope that our friends at Berns, Ekstranda, Patricksson Communication and elsewhere have the stamina to keep developing Stockholm’s fashion week, which is becoming an important attraction in this city. Later this week, I will visit Copenhagen to see a few shows, for the first time in years. I look forward to seeing how we face up in the local competition!

www.sthlmfashionweek.com
www.beckmans.se

So it has has once again come to its end: the subpolar fashion week of the industriously trend-conscious middle-classes...

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