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! :-)

Stockholm part 2

Up-dating, finally!
Stockholm really got the better of me and I ended up with a pretty bad cold and of course a lot of follow ups on the to do-list. Well, while I was still in the big city I had a couple of very interesting meetings with sales-agents. Of course nothing is simple, swift and in the bag... but, there's definitely hope.
And of course I managed to squeeze a little more of my best sport into the stay. Hanging out with friends and colleauges over drinks, that is.

Very conveniently the lovely Susanne Beskow of Van Deurs opened her shop in shop, at Snickarbacken 7 in Stockholm, where she shares a beautiful space with a café, gallery and interior decoration shop. So it was art show opening, shop opening and premiere of the whole space, all rolled into one. And lots of people, even if they're not in my pics.

The accordion-pleats are the signature of Van Deurs. Here also illustrated by the smart and elegant hang-tag. Congrats Susanne, well done!

See me dwarfed by my wonderful old friend Bodil and Susanne, two true amazons! Let me tell you, Bodil was very excited about finding a designer also taller than 180 cm (both with good margin, I believe). I'm sure there's gonna be some tall garments sold as a result of this...

The next day I went to see Ylva Liljefors at her office at post fire dew. Of course everything they were working on was top-secret and I had to be very careful not to accidentally get Ylvas mood-board in the picture. But I did get her round window and Ylva very proudly wearing her Slayer T-shirt.

Just before getting on the train I hooked up with funny, bubbly, crazy stylist Angie, who flattered me immensely by wearing a Robert&Blad dress for our meeting. After two hours of catching up, since it's been a while, she followed me across the street, to the train station.
And so it was over between Stockholm and me for this time. Well, I got to keep that little souvenir, the cold, of course. Thanks Stockholm!

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