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August 14, 2007 3:27 pm
The Swedish equivalent of the CFDA award is the Guldknappen (Golden Button) award, given by the magazine Damernas Värld. This season it was presented to expat designer Ann-Sofie Back, who, after getting a degree at Beckmans College of Design in Stockholm, decamped for London and Central Saint Martins. Back’s signature idiosyncrasies—straps made of telephone-coil-like key chains, bandage skirts that owe more to Frankenstein than Hervé Léger—have become so much a part of the fashion scene in the British capital that she’s designing for Topshop. Her second capsule collection for the retailer will hit the rails during London fashion week. We spoke to her on award night in Stockholm earlier this week.
Do you define yourself as a Scandinavian designer?
When I’m in London I don’t think about it much. It feels like we’re all just London designers—we’ve got Austrians and Greek people and Swedes and everything. Although I feel very Swedish, I don’t think my clothes are very Swedish.
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What are they, then?
International. What makes my design different is mainly that my source of inspiration is not straightforward. I’m inspired by mistakes or embarrassment, the gap between how you think you look and what you actually look like, clichés about fashion, and how people dress to hide who they are rather than show who they are.
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What’s your take on Scandinavian fashion?
I think what Sweden is good at now are the brands—those kinds of jeans/everyday-wear type brands. But what we’re getting better at, which I think is exciting, is all of the new designers that are coming up. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens with that.
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Any plans to expand to New York?
Not this soon, no.
—Laird Borrelli-Persson
Photo: Sacha Maric/VOGUE.COM
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Thank goodness some bloggers can still write. Thank you for this post!!!
By jesse dziedzic on 10/20/11 at 12:56 pm