Stockholm Fashion Week is relaunching as a fully fledged physical showcase on 2 to 5 June after a six-year hiatus, with backing from the Swedish government.
Previous organiser the Swedish Fashion Council shocked the industry when it announced the cancellation of Stockholm Fashion Week in July 2019, less than two months before it was due to take place, citing a need to rethink the event’s purpose and make it more eco-friendly. Since then, there have been some smaller iterations of the fashion week, including some digital editions during 2020 and 2021. Under new organiser the Association of Swedish Fashion Brands (ASFB), Stockholm Fashion Week returned to a hybrid physical-online format in 2022, but it was a low-key affair that consisted mostly of studio visits and a few live shows. That same year, the Swedish Fashion Council brought buyers and press to Stockholm to meet the country’s homegrown talent, in a two-day event called SFC[X].
Now, Stockholm Fashion Week is being fully rebooted by the ASFB with the aim of offering local fashion talent a platform through which to target international buyers and editors. For the first time, it is backed by the Swedish government through the Ministry for Foreign Affairs (the amount of funding provided has not been disclosed).
There will be a renewed focus on attracting international visitors: participating brands have been invited to curate a hospitality guest list, with the Swedish Institute and Business Sweden enabling a programme for buyers, and Patriksson Group for press. The list of brands and schedule will be announced soon.
As part of the plans, ASFB is launching a programme to support emerging designers to show at fashion week, called STHLMFW Front.
Here, ASFB director John-Jamal Gille shares more on how Stockholm Fashion Week has evolved.
Vogue Business: Tell us about the rebooted Stockholm Fashion Week — what’s changed?
I was hired three years ago to lead Stockholm Fashion Week — I joined in April 2022 and we delivered a fashion week that August. After that, it was very clear that the event needed to be completely restructured.
Something that is changing now is that we do not produce shows for the brands showing on-schedule. It used to all be held in one space, but now we’re helping the brands open up venues that haven’t been used before, or we help them with the teams that they need or any other kind of support that might be useful. And our focus instead is on making sure the international guests in attendance are those that the brands want. Stockholm was always great at consumer-facing PR, at branding and spectacle, but the buyer part was kind of missing.
