Why Red? Why Not Blue?
We love the clean lines, neat shapes and quirky details of modernist Swedish fashion brand Whyred. Established in 1999, Whyred was founded by Roland Hjort, Lena Patriksson and Jonas Clason, three former employees of H&M who decided to combine their collective skills in design, production and marketing to create their own fashion brand.
Separate from their regular collections, Whyred have also created Art Project, an ongoing series of creative collaborations with artists, as a way of gaining inspiration though experimentation with fresh ideas in contemporary art. With the belief that artists and designers should inspire each other and come up with new creations together, Art Project was launched in 2005 with help from the Stockholm based curator Ben Loveless.
Whyred’s most recent collaboration is with the Swedish artist Malin Pettersson Öberg who created a wall painting (in the Whyred store at Mäster Samuelsgatan in Stockholm) that touches on the themes of language, cultural identity, urban rumors and the borders between reality and fiction. Two earlier collaborations have also been successfully produced with two other Swedish artists: Underwear with Jockum Nordström in 2005 and Bags and T-Shirts with Roger Andersson in 2006. Take a look below to see a selection of our favorite outfits from Whyred’s SS08 collection and to read more about the company:
Why Whyred? Apparently the inspiration for the name Whyred comes from Roland Hjort’s grandfather, the artist Sven X:et Erixon, who was asked to reveal his favorite color was during an radio interview in the 1950’s. Not knowing quite how to answer, he said “Red”. When the journalist asked “Why red?”, the artist replied “Well...blue then”. Since fashion, as art, should never be one dimensional, Whyred was chosen as an apt name for the new fashion brand.
With three Whyred stores in Stockholm with a new store opening this month in Copenheagen, Whyred has offices in Stockholm, Copenhagen and Paris and is available in well over 230 stores across 21 countries, including: Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, United Kingdom, USA, Canada, Hong Kong and Japan.
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