B
IS FOR BLOGGERS
Scandinavia is a hotbed for style bloggers, from
Mikael Colville-Anderson’s pioneering Copenhagen
Cycle Chic blog (copenhagencyclechic.com) to
Sweden’s Elin Kling (stylebykling.nowmanifest.com), who is
so important she’s designed ranges for H&M off the back of
her blog. Our favourite at the moment, though, is Hel-looks
(
hel-looks.com), a Helsinki street-style blog started in 2005
by Liisa Jokinen and Sampo Karjalainen. Don’t expect haute
couture, but plenty of offbeat style tips from a brilliantly
varied demographic, age range 8-70 – think, “The rope was
tied around a carpet; now it’s my belt,” and “I found this
shirt in a dumpster.” If it looks good, it all counts.
C
IS FOR COS
H&M should probably be on
the list, but we prefer the
brand’s 2007 offshoot, COS
(
it stands for Collection of Style), which
neatly sums up the clean minimalist
side of Scandinavian design. While most
designers go for designs that make their
brand stand out, COS’s clothes are almost
defiantly subtle, with shades of Jil Sander,
Helmut Lang or even Muji.
cosstores.com
Hel-looks.com
A
IS FOR ACNE
Back in 1997, Acne Studios started like a lot of Scandinavian fashion success
stories, when Jonny Johansson made 100 pairs of jeans in raw denim and
handed them to his friends and family in Stockholm. Today, it’s a superstar
global brand, with cult stores that look like art installations in all the world’s fashion
capitals – and it’s expanded from jeans to become a full fashion label, producing
everything from suits to sharp knitwear and sunglasses. They even do publishing
better than most – the biannual
Acne Paper
has contributors as varied as Carine
Roitfeld, David Lynch, Noam Chomsky and Tilda Swinton. Interesting fact: Acne Studio’s
Stockholm flagship store on Norrmalmstorg is at the location where the term Stockholm
Syndrome was coined in 1973 to describe the psychological phenomenon first noted
when hostages in a bank robbery became empathetic to the robbers.
acnestudios.com
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