All the Cool Stuff We Saw at Stockholm Fashion Week
New York, London, Milan, Paris...Stockholm? The Scandinavian city may not be a verified fashion capital, but there's a whole lot of great stuff coming out of Sweden these days. You're probably familiar with the spell Acne's cast on the industry (not to mention Teen Vogue's editors!) and blogger Elin Kling's domination of the fashion world. But have you heard of AltewaiSaome, or Carin Wester? We hadn't either, which is why we decided a visit to Stockholm Fashion Week was in order.
It was cold, dark—and totally awesome. After getting over a bout of jetlag, we set off to see all the best shows and the coolest spots around the city. Here's your virtual tour!
Photos: Julia Rubin1/10Unlike bigger (read: more hectic and stressful!) fashion weeks, Stockholm has a set schedule of shows that don't overlap with one another and are spread throughout the day. Which means you can actually see everything you want to see! Our international press pass gave us access to all the presentations, which we more than took advantage of. And those awesome chandeliers? Those are hanging at the Berns Hotel, the hub of SFW—not a bad spot to spend a few days.
Photos: Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, Julia Rubin2/10Sweden rules.
Photos: Julia Rubin3/10The food in Sweden is excellent, from their famed meatballs to reindeer (yes, reindeer) tartare. We sampled a bit of everything, but the two most unexpected finds had to be the tubes of caviar our hotel served at breakfast and the insane fruit situation at the Filippa K presentation. Even though it looks like something straight out of an Old Master still life, the fruit is 100% real, and guests and models alike snacked on it while checking out and showing off looks from the Stockholm-based brand.
Photos: Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week4/10Now let's get down to some of the best looks of the week. From the left we've got House of Dagmar, Ida Sjöstedt, Whyred, and Carin Wester. One of our favorite trends from SFW was menswear-inspired tailoring (great lace-ups included), as you can see with Dagmar (one of Stockholm's most well-known labels) and Whyred (the very first show of the week). You can't beat a sweater/ball gown skirt combo like the one we saw at Ida, while Carin did slouchy matchy-matchy just right—plus, socks and heels forever!
Photos: Julia Rubin5/10Another reason we came to Stockholm? To see the H&M Design Award show. You can read more about it here, but WOW is the winner Eddy Anemian insanely talented. We got to meet him backstage after the show, where we also chatted with H&M’s creative head of design, Ann-Sofie Johansson. Her floral Givenchy skate shoes gave us serious sneaker envy.
Photos: Julia Rubin6/10Stockholm is actually comprised of 14 islands, each with its own distinctive vibe. The shows brought us to areas both urban (like the Kulturhuset in the city center, complete with an awesome light sculpture to help fend off the winter blues) and picturesque (check out that harbor!). And the presentations themselves were held in impressive buildings; a church on the museum-filled island of Skeppsholmen was a particular fave.
Photos: Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, Julia Rubin7/10The Cheap Monday show won in terms of sheer theatricality. Upon entering the venue, we were treated to movie theater popcorn in paper cones and Coke in glass bottles, but the real shock-and-delight moment happened when we walked into the actual show space. The dark, cavernous room was set up like an '80s prom, complete with slow-dancing couples illuminated by spotlights. Oh, and the throwback tunes ruled. (And the clothes were cute, too!)
Photos: Julia Rubin8/10Even though we were seeing lots and lots of capital-F Fashion, a shopping trip was still in order! We swung by Snickarbacken 7, a boutique-slash-cafe housed in an amazing building that used to be the stables of a Catholic girls' school in the 1800s. Not only is the space unreal, but the clothes are seriously great. They have vintage duds, as well as goods from Stutterheim, a hip Swedish raincoat company, and Ann-Sofie Back, an avant-garde designer who showed at SFW. We also crushed on the cute kids' stuff and indulged in fika, which is what the Swedes call a much-deserved afternoon coffee break.
Photos: Julia Rubin9/10Another fun thing to do in Stockholm: Check out the showrooms of some of its most successful brands. We first found ourselves at H&M HQ, where we got the scoop on each and every color to expect for spring/summer 2015 thanks to a rack of fabric swatches. We also hit up the offices of & Other Stories, a label owned by H&M that we hope makes it stateside very, very soon. The vibe is Anthropologie with an edge, and we totally dug their inspo boards and shelves of shoe-making materials. Who knew that's how heels came to be?!
Photos: Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week10/10Perhaps the most hotly anticipated show of the week was AltewaiSaome, a cool-Swedish-girl brand designed by—you guessed it—two cool Swedish girls. The young label is certainly one to watch, and we loved the primary color palette and the clean lines that allowed for just the right amount of almost-messy-but-still-totally-put-together movement.
