Malmö - patterns & structures

A frozen coastline, amazingly enough the same as in the very first posts in this blog (july).

Oooooh!

Both birds and humans appear to prefer the little bridge.

Clinging to every word.

Silver birch tree

I know, banal motif, but never the less irresistable to the photographer.
Please forgive me.

Great undefinable colours and very definable lines.

Look, the're growing...

Now the neighbouring house has icicles all the way down to the window ledge!

And last night i found an A laying on the ground. Anyone missing one?

Plenty of white topping.

Decided not to have breakfast in the garden this morning. Seems amazing that I ever have...

Opting for lots of gingerbread cookies indoors instead...

I wish you all a very merry x-mas!

Stuck inside of Malmö with the x-mas blues again...

Check out the icicles on my neighbour's house...

Was supposed to go on a seven hour, northbound train journey with two transfers today, but the south of Sweden is smothered in snow and bloody nothing works! Nothing leaves Malmö central station. Except of course dissapointed travellers.


To be honest, returning back home from the station is waaay preferable to getting stuck halfway and forced to spend the night in some freezing, hell-hole station.
I guess the picture says it all.

Besides, have already been invited to lunch on x-mas eve by superb neighbours. :-D
Not the icicle record-holder, that is.

Bits & pieces...

Googled Robert&Blad and to my surprise found this...
and this as well. Two little films from Robert&Blad's participation in London Fashion Week.
Enjoy...

Miscellaneous...

Just a couple of things that put me in a good mood.
Hope they'll do the same for you.

This makes me hopefull of the kids.
Of course there is a chance it was made by some 30+, board-riding ad-agency guy. But still...


And the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Mmm... Enjoy!

NGBG t-shirt release party. Everybody was there...

The bar. Or the altar, as someone suggested.

Some of the best guys I know, from left superb bluesman Svante Sjöblom, Sebastian who runs the club "Ain't nobody's mistress but my own" and to my left Daniel Pedersen, one of my great photographer friends.

A perfect, early Friday evening after work in the studio. I was very pleasantly surprised by the turn up (around 60 people), in spite of it being really snowy and cold. Thanks friends!!

Lured them in with free beers...

Sharpest dressers this evening: my former intern Johan and Louise his girlfriend.

So this is what it was all about. The release of the t-shirt which is an homage to the street
Norra GrängesBergsGatan, where the studio is located. This is the street for illegal after hours clubs, baclava bakeries, Polish bootleg booze and a bunch of other dodgy emterprises. Robert&Blad included. ;-D

My dear old friend Heléne Thoresdotter, another of my much appreciated photographers, here with her fiancé Max. Two of the best, all categories!

Aha, customers! Staffan, teacher and funk-nerd with Johan who works with something super interesting to do with interaction design. I think.

Jenny Nordberg, half of Apokalyps Labotek, designers of our time, working with different types of waste as raw material. Brill, check out! And stylish Louise again, with pearls on her sweather.

In charge of marketing & pr this evening, Svante Sjöblom. Great salesman grin! Next to him his girlfriend Malin who also acted as my assistant for the evening. She most definitely did not spend it sitting on her ass!

The most picturesque printing shop in the world?

Yeah, we got snow... Just in time for me to do a two-day session in the silkscreen printing shop. The radiator isn't so hot (pun intended). It has to be turned really high in the morning, and do it's thing for a while. Eventually it's ok to go out there to start working. But it does look extremely inviting, wouldn't you say?

There they are, hanging three rows deep, the t-shirts in honour of that gloriously grungy, gritty and grimy street Norra Grängesbergsgatan, where the studio is located.

Release party in the studio this friday at four. Do come! :-)

Malmö goes all Gaga

Lady Gaga plays Malmö this evening and this inspired the paper City (p. 32-33) to invite Robert&Blad and two others Malmö-based designers for a fun little experiment. We each got a bag of stuff to use to create a spectacular outfit, Gaga-style.


We're talking stuff that would not normally be used for clothes. I got paper napkins, coffee filters, muffin moulds, cake doilies and paper cups. And it should take no more than half a day to make. Once I got my basic ideas sorted I actually got it done in two hours. And I used everything in the bag. Especially proud of the coffee cup-rings on the skirt and that I managed not only hat and bag, but also pimped the shoes with muffin moulds.

Hat made from paper cup, doily and muffin moulds.

Keeping the novemberness at bay...

Todays tip for surviving the long, dark winter: Pimp your coffee-filters.

The hunt for eco-fabrics & the recycling of own designs

In October I went to Sweden's textile capital Borås for the fabric fair. I was particularly searching for a good woven eco-cotton or hemp, for trousers and skirts. I think I may have found the right fabric, and as you can see, if I would want to incorporate colours in the collection the possibilities are there... Being a quality and control freak I will want to make a few samples an wear and especially wash a few times before settling on the fabric. It will definitely be great to be able to add a bunch of bottoms to the collection, as it is a bit weak on that front at the moment.

An other thing I was on a quest for was a wool to do a remake of this Robert&Blad coat from 1992 or -93. I was amazed at how much I liked it upon being reunited with it. Dear old customer My let me borrow this on-off piece so I could refresh my memory. I'm flattered and proud that My has kept, used and loved it for all these years! Thanks My!

So here is the first sample remake. Accidentally got sewing machine oil on the lining so I'm afraid I'll be forced to keep it myself. Dommage! ;-)

I did find a very interesting Portuguese recycled wool for it. So it will be available in the collection from next fall. By then I will have tested this one and can tell you truthfully if it's possible to bicycle in it or not. I might have to lie...

Shop away!

Finally the webshop is live! Go crazy, knock yourselves out and by doing so be proud in helping out with the financing of The Fridge (and maybe a glass of champagne or two).

Robert&Blad - now cooler than ever!

Maybe the access to cold milk for the coffee doesn't render this kind off excitement in every workplace...

You all might not find the arrival of a fridge that exciting...
Studiomate Sofia got so caught up in the excitement that she actually dreamt about the arrival of The Fridge, even though she's only been in the studio for a couple of weeks.

But trust me, after three years of this, it's an everyday luxury beyond comprehension. No more food hanging out the window! So, note to self: Don't forget to appreciate the things in life that actually work. God knows there's enough of the opposite...

Neuköllns finest comes to visit

Last week my dear friend Silke Jentsch came to visit for a few days. Silke is the designer of fashion brand Mutabilis Berlin. We first met when we had stands next to each other at Tokyo fashion fair IFF, in 2006. In a period of about one month we also met at the fairs in Berlin and Copenhagen where I showed Robert&Blad. While Silke did things at a slightly smarter pace, I also managed to squeeze in showing in Paris and Stockholm during a period of totally six week. Absolutely suicidal of course! And I ended up with tinnitus and nosebleeds... But trust me, I learned something from that!

In december 2008 Silke was in Malmö working out of Robert&Blads studio for a month and a half. It was great fun and we really get along well, in spite of being very different. We also give each other lots of help and support, practically as well as morally. A generosity not to be taken for granted between designers, where the the competitive climate often makes it very cold.

During her time in Malmö she'd never had coffee at the excellent coffee bar in the corner of Ystadsgatan and Möllevångstorget, so now I took here there. It is a corner of mad traffic and constant action. Never a dull moment looking out the large windows!

One of the places Silke of course insisted of visiting in Malmö is super nice restaurant/bar/hang-out Tempo. Where we felt very happy and at home, as you can see...

Joachim, who works at Tempo, told me how he appreciated the article in the sunday supplement a few weeks back where I pointed out that Jever is my absolute favorite beer. We've sort of bonded on the subject of Jever before. Very nice. It's good to have a friend on the other side of the bar. Since he's also the singer in a cool rock 'n' roll band, of course I want to be friends with him!

I don't know what this is, or what it's doing in the street. Neither does it have anything to do with any of the places where we ate or drank. Anyway, we decided against it.

Oh, and by the way, I got some very flattering attention for being a gifted stylist, in the swedish photo blog Konsten att stjäla ett ögonblick. Thank you! :-)