Avavav (Q3798)
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independent fashion house founded by Beate Karlsson
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Avavav |
independent fashion house founded by Beate Karlsson |
Statements
Oops!…she did it again—or something like that. Avavav’s Beate Karlsson charmed and challenged the fashion establishment afresh with an offbeat show format—but let’s be clear, there was no oops factor involved. In fact, the odds of this small, women-led company based in Stockholm making waves in one of the big four cities are close to none. And so the designer (who trained in New York and worked for Pyer Moss before returning to Europe) has turned her point of difference, namely her digital fluency, into a defining aspect of her brand.Avavav is not the only millennial or Gen Alpha brand speaking directly to its peer audience (see Vain, for example), but Karlsson is unique in her use of fashion as a two-way mirror. Her designs are casual: mostly jeans, statement T-shirts, and streetwear—with a difference. Her shoulderless hoodies, worn Conehead style, have been very influential, as have her finger shoes, in which Rick Owens has been photographed out and about. Denim comes in interesting washes, and an elephant-leg effect is created by tucking the flared bottoms of the pants.Karlsson, like many designers this season, turned her attention to sports. Her motivation was a collaboration with Adidas. “It’s been a dream of mine to collaborate with them, specifically,” she said on a call. She “dedicated the show to the partnership because it is a big deal for us and a lot of the looks are going to be showing the product that we’ve made with them.” Thisisa big deal, because not only is Avavav a relatively small business, but, in 2024, there are so few women invited into the streetwear space. And, as the designer noted, “There are a lot of interesting things that can come from bringing feminine attributes into streetwear.” She proved that today.To frame the collaboration, Karlsson held her show in a sports arena. The concept was that the models would “compete” to beat the world record in the 100 meters. The tagline: “High fashion and low performance.” For Avavav fans, the models’ stumbling will feel like a reference to the viralspring 2023 showat which every model fell (on purpose). Although only a section of the track was used, the choice of event and the full oval could easily be read as a metaphor for the fashion industry as a whole and the circularity, inwardness, and repetition of its set cycles. Karlsson does find some irony in fashion’s pursuit of athleticism, but she was coming from a more benign mindset.
“There’s a lot of curiosity and seriousness and rules within the fashion industry, and there’s a lot of seriousness and rules within sports as well, so it’s been fun to try to mix them,” she said.
22 September 2024
Beate Karlsson has been on an uphill journey since she joined Avavav. Hired as creative director in 2021, early last year she joined forces with fellow Swede, co-owner, and CEO Johanna Blom to buy the (now female-led) business. This was not a one-and-done process, but involved lots of legal wrangling and resetting terms with suppliers and producers, which diverted Karlsson’s attention away from making clothes. The title of last season’s “unfinished” line up was No Time to Design, No Time to Explain. Finally on firmer ground, the new collection was more robust than previous ones.Karlsson has relied on noise to bring attention to this small, independent brand. A keen observer, manipulator, and satirist of digital culture, she crafted a number of clever, viral shows (models falling, garments falling off midway down the runway) that were more about concept than clothes. The result of the success of these presentations is, said the designer on a call, that “the brand is bigger than, or more known, than the product at this point, which is something that had to [change] now.” And indeed, the product range was extended beyond the hoodies (fall’s were shoulderless), T-shirts (some were extended into slightly fitted dresses), and caps Avavav is most known for. The brand’s “filthy rich” slogan was back, as were money prints; new was more of a focus on tailoring. There was a raw edge chalk-striped suit, and a similarly (un)finished overcoat that revealed the three layers of its construction, a hooded Oxford shirt dress, a spade-cross necktie, and a blazer with pleated tucks on one side that created a pleasing asymmetry.The button-loop paneled skirt of the past was reconsidered in a pencil silhouette with spiked hem. Karlsson, who designed accessories at Coach and Pyer Moss, and is known for her “finger shoes” (which Rick Owens has been spotted in) introduced a scalloped shell bag for fall. Her pants game is on point. The acid-washed denims that are a theme of the season appeared here in acid green. Smocking and tucked pleats were used on dresses, sleeve- and pant-hems, adding textural interest to flared silhouettes. The collection read as vital as it did young. In truth, Karlsson’s tweaks on the familiar have the everyday realness that is the season’s mantra, at a price point that is more down to earth than stratospheric.
25 February 2024
The concurrence of Moschino’s 40th anniversary and Avavav’s first time showing on Milan’s official calendar seems to be one of those instances of meaningful, if coincidental, synchronicity. In three short years, Beate Karlsson has established a reputation as a disruptor; with spring’s No Time to Design, No Time to Explain collection, she followed in Franco Moschino’s footsteps by assuming the role of fashion’s conscience as well. Like the Italian, she’s able to maintain a sense of humor in the process.A young Swede, trained in London and New York and operating between Stockholm and Florence, Karlsson’s anthropomorphic footwear is Instagram gold, as were her previous two outings. In one, models stumbled their way down the runway—a play on the falling-model meme. The following season was a parade of walking fashion disasters as models’ clothes fell off and straps and heels broke as they navigated the catwalk. Asked if she felt pressure to make noise, Karlsson had this to say: “It’s been super-important for us, obviously, for the past two years because we were completely new. We needed to be like, ‘Hey, here’s a brand! This is us!’ But I’m starting to get a little bit sick of it, because I think there’s a general trend in the industry right now to be loud, which can be very painful and almost feel desperate when there’s no depth to it. For us, it’s been super-important to know that there’s actually something we want to say.”Hired as the creative director of the brand in 2020, last year Karlsson and a partner bought out the original owners and since then have been in seemingly endless meetings poring over contracts and negotiating with lawyers. Not only did this give the designer a view into the behind-the-scenes reality of the business, but it left her little time to actually put her training into practice and make clothes. Karlsson is not the only creative person to feel this way; this is a situation many people are in. Putting specific business cases aside, the number of audiences a designer is meant to be in constant contact with—and satisfy—is simply untenable. This Avavav outing, the designer wrote, was “about the frustration, anger, and anxiety that this stress creates and the irony in it.”
24 September 2023
Within the space of a month, three designers I’ve spoken with have manifested their fears through their collections. One of them is Beate Karlsson, who built on the idea she introduced at her made-to-be-memed spring show. Last season, said the designer, the focus was on “the failure of the individual, of the models being embarrassed andfalling on the runway, and this time it’s more like the embarrassment of us as a fashion house. Like, what’s the most embarrassing thing that can happen to us? And then I thought that things breaking is perhaps one of the most embarrassing things.” And so, as models walked the catwalk, heels (deliberately) broke and pieces of clothing were peeled away. At the end, the wall also fell down. “It was magical-looking,” said Karlsson, a provocateur with a keen sense of theater and humor, not to mention her finger on the pulse. She didmermaidcorebefore it was a thing, and Avavav’s finger boots are Rick Owens approved. (He wasspottedwearing a pair not long ago.)The broken heel.Photo: Federico Pompei, @petroli0 / courtesy of AVAVAV
2 March 2023