When you think of Sweden you often think about snow and cold weather, combined with it being dark most of the time in the winter. What is easy to forget is that in the summer it is opposite. It is almost light around the clock.  The light in the summer is worldwide renowned and specially in southern part of Sweden. Österlen, an area in southern part of Sweden, is known for its amazing light, and the whole area is full of painters who live there due to the light and beautiful natural surroundings.  

Southern part of Sweden also goes under the nickname “the Swedish Riviera”, the county of Skåne is known for its beaches like no other region in Sweden. It’s the southernmost county in Sweden and offers long, warm beaches.

Åhus -Yngsjö has a forty kilometre long coast called the Åla coast. It is the autumnal eel fishing and the many eel huts that have made the beach famous, but during the summers it’s the beaches that matter. The sand is fine, white even though the water can sometimes be a bit cold. The constant topic of summer is . “Have you been for a swim yet?” and “Was it cold?”

When we were in Sweden this year, we went to Åhus -Yngsjö (where I grew up in the summers as a child). Here are a few photos from the Åla coast, where the white beaches are mixed up with eel huts along the beach.

 

Åhus is a little seaside town filled with famous Swedish design. The most famous is Absolut Vodka that originates from Åhus, with the famous design bottle that they concurred the world with, Swedish design at its best. 

BLÅ STATION is another successful design from Åhus. BLÅ STATION makes furniture with an innovative frame of mind, or like they like to say themselves – with a child’s curiosity – and a heart that refuses to take the easy way out.

So it felt close to my heart when I had my first child William and I started dreaming about making sought-after Swedish designed children’s clothes, to start from my own Swedish inheritage, growing up in Åhus -Yngsjö during the summers.

I started with having a painter from Åhus, Malin Bolte to make a few characters for me, one being our character the Moose Älgen. The characters are fun and their personalities are vivacious. The Moose Älgen is funny, he loves running around the Swedish forests exploring. He is the  biggest animal in the Swedish forest but he is still loving and kind and the kids love him.

So from some of the characters I then designed clothing that was inspired from my Swedish upbringing. You can see some of the clothes being worn by the kids on the photos from the beach. They are actually all available in my Swedish Kids online store, very retro-vogue!

Designing and making my clothing range has been the most fascinating journey and I hope you will enjoy them as much as our little customers do.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 2nd, 2009 at 10:04 pm and is filed under Swedish Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.