Fashion friends united and Finnish TV

Busy days in Stockholm...
Last night I got together with another fellow designer and wonderful friend. Ylva Liljefors has dressed all the coolest people in Sweden and is also a great person to be around. I will try to fit in a visit to her work, at mens brand Post Fire Dew, before going back to Malmö.

As you can probably tell from the pix, Ylva and I have slightly differing approaches to life...

In spite of this we really like each other! Though she didn't really buy my braid as being the genuine article and was a bit disrespectful about it...

One of the things on todays schedule was a meet with Finnish television, for a show they are making about Minna - the successful fashion blogger.
Going there, reminded me of how it's not always (in fact hardly EVER!) limos and champagne. It's a lot more like, with tired feet on a very scryffy old bus No.74, and the collection in a battered old aluminum suit case.

Anyway it got better! Minna is very concentrated while taking instuctions from producer Liisa Akimof. Truthfully, she looks petrified.

Something she quickly got over! Once she had three cameras pointed at herself, she seemed perfecly comfortable. I got some footage too, and we really managed to wave a lot of Robert&Blad designs around, and tried to sneak the logo in to every shoot and every angle.

It's going to be super fun to watch, even though I don't understand a word of finnish. Apparently the tv-show will not be accessible on the web, outside of Finland, due to copyrights. So those of you who can watch Yle 1, be alert!

Visting Astrid Björk

I'm in Stockholm at the moment. Today I spent a lovely afternoon in the studio/workshop of jewellery designer and friend Astrid Björk.
Astrid has a super nice little shop connected to her workspace at the top of the steps at Blecktornsgränd. A very picturesque adress at Söder, worth the climb whether you're into stylish jewellery or not.

This is Astrid worktable. Inspiring, indeed!
No wonder she's got that huge smile on her face!

I managed to keep Astrid from working for at least two hours, over coffee and brownies. Or I shouldn't say keep her from work, since we are our work. It's always on our minds and we are constantly talking about it. It's great to have collegues and friends to share info and tips with, as well as warnings! Not to speak of to test ideas and just generally support each other.

Now Astrid and I are toying with the idea of some kind of collaboration. Maybe an exhibition, maybe a fashionshow. We'll see what the future holds...

Paradise revisited & specimen taken for experiment.

Recently I went for a meeting with one of my favourite retailers, Carlson Ahnell in Skanör. It's a great shop and webshop where you'll find a range of Robert&Blad clothes in the new, lovely and environmentally smart hemp/lycra jerseymix.

Skanör is the village by the sea where I grew up, where my parents live and where my dads family comes from, for generations. It also happens to be one of the most beautiful places on earth, now sadly under siege by an army of suv-people.

While in Skanör, I naturally went for a swim...

But I also took the opportunity to start a little perfume & preservative-free cosmetics-experiment. Since I love what swimming in the sea does for my hair, I decided to try using the real thing this winter, instead of perfumed saltwater-spray off the counter.

Quite a lot of seaweed, due to the winds on this day, made the water pretty cloudy. My mother convinced me it would be full of eggs and larvae and other unknown things that would either hatch or rot. I actually took that in, in spite of the source being mom!

So once the icky stuff settled, I carefully decanted the water and boiled it.

Stay with me and I'll keep you updated on the experiment.

Read it, if you can.

Here's the whole article. If you don't read swedish you may enjoy the pix...

Another 15 minutes...

Yours truly had the pleasure of getting six full pages, including the cover of the morningpaper sunday supplement. Sweet indeed!
Here wearing Bat tunic, Tie tights from Robert&Blad and boxing gloves (stylists own ;-)).

The devil is in the details

If Satan was one of those petty, little every day irritations, I would say that Satan was a nick in the edge of the packing tape!

It has been driving me nuts while I’ve been packing boxes for delivery to the retailers. All the time I’m considering throwing an almost new roll of tape in the bin, but some sort of hope and mad determination kept me using it while swearing madly. Well, in the end the nick ran out. And I’m still here! Robert&Blad vs. Satan 1-0

And the devil sometimes hides in the folds of the clothes. When production arrives there is the very tedious task of going through everything and check the quality. There are always mistakes! It doesn’t matter how good the production. And where’s the intern when she’s needed??

Production will hate me, but hopefully retailers and wearers will love me for being so thorough. And I do deserve your love after re-pressing loads of stuff from the factory, which I didn’t think met my standards. Now I’m not referring to things being wrinkled, but to the pressing, which is an integrated phase in the production of clothes. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t such a well educated designer (mens tailor and patternmaker). Then I might not even know that the pressing wasn’t good.

Welcome to the world of fashion 10% creativity and 90% damagecontrol. No, that was unfair! Actually a lot of the damagecontrol requires a large amount of creativity.

Anyway, check out what it’s all about at: Folk, Hep Cat Store and Carlson Ahnell