Rolf Ekroth (Q9062)
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Rolf Ekroth is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Rolf Ekroth |
Rolf Ekroth is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Social worker, professional poker player, casino employee… Rolf Ekroth’s road to fashion was a winding one. Once he had set his course on design, he went in the direction of menswear with a technical sports aspect before introducing womenswear. Over time, his course veered farther from a clear sports focus and closer to rustic influences, intensive handcraft, and print. All of these elements were present in his spring 2025 collection. See: the aprons over pants and the dandelion jeans, the latter of which feature 250 handmade and applied pendants that required over hours of work to make.) Yet what this show, the third of a trio supported by CPHFW’s NewTalent program, seemed to reveal was that the most distinctive trait of Ekroth’s work is not something you can point a finger at, but rather his identity as a Finn.All of the designer’s work iterates on this theme, but his choice of traditional Finnish songs really emphasized the point this season. Then there was the title,Lavatanssit(which refers to Finnish dance pavilions in the countryside where “everyone is in search of a dream, from wallflowers to nighttime legends. While Finnish people may appear stoic, beneath their reserve burns a blend of romance and melancholy.” It was not difficult to see the sunlight and shadow in the collection, but it wasn’t left at that, rather Ekroth added to the plot the idea ofhukkumisbingo(drowning bingo), “a game where bets are placed on how many drunken people end up lost in the lake each summer.” Learning this, the life vest-inspired toppers and the print-covered lifesaver seemed much less whimsical than at first glance. Yet another Finnish word/concept to enter the equation wasrakas(love)—a frisky kind of love, at least when it came to the T-shirt with flowers and nipple rings at the breasts. Septum-ring-like piercings (round like life preservers) appeared as hardware throughout the lineup; oddly they didn’t read as punk.Somehow the circle didn’t close with this collection. When Ekroth made hisdebut at Pitti Uomoin 2019, the collection was much more sports focused. In this Olympics year it would have been timely to build out this offering beyond the very attractive windbreakers and the Puma Speedcats that were on show. Two-tone sweats worn with a hoodie and roomy cardigan were a felicitous combination of athleisure and grunge. Patch-kneed pants shown with a grandpa cardigan looked at once naive and grandad, a quite intriguing narrative combination.
5 August 2024
According to Rolf Ekroth, there’s no Finnish equivalent to the Danish concept of hygge. While there might not be a name for it, this homey, knit-rich collection suggests it exists nevertheless.In Ekroth’s new lineup, winter sports vied with an interiors theme. One of the hero pieces was a Barbour-style jacket with a tufted back, inspired by the designer’s grandmother’s “’80s velvet couch” on which the family would gather to watch the Winter Olympic and other snow sports. “The Finns used to win a lot,” he noted with his typical deadpan humor.Actual velvet made its way into the collection through a partnership with the Finnish rug maker Mattocenter. Lovely as they were, these materials added a touch of haute boheme that competed with the more domestic theme.When it came to knitwear, the designer was in his groove. Inspired by Nordic patterns, these featured little figures, birds, and other rustic elements. In partnership with Novita, a yarn company, kits will be sold for the needle-wielders. Backstage, Ekroth explained that “20% of the Finnish population do some sort of knitting. And that was news to me, because I’m not one of those 20%.” He is, however, extremely craft oriented. The snowballs bouncing on the finale looks were handcrafted by Ekroth and his parents, who regularly lend a hand to such projects. The harlequin pattern on a pair of maroon-and-blue pants, for example, is not a print. It was created by cutting up old Puma football shirts and sewing the pieces together individually. The gold coins on a smart cardigan represented sports medals; they were printed with a Super Mario 8 bit graphic referencing another couch-surfing activity Ekroth is fond of. Speaking of which, “Rakas,” the word printed on hoodies and such, translates to “dear one” or “love.”Some of Ekroth’s earlier work had technical and functional aspects that were really exciting. Given the theme, that kind of approach could have been interesting here. Still, there was lots to warm to.
30 January 2024
If Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince could find a rose on the moon, why shouldn’t Rolf Ekroth be able to make them bloom in an indoor skate park? That’s just what the Finnish designer did for his runway debut as part of the New Talent program at Copenhagen Fashion Week.Ekroth is no stranger to thorns—he reports that the investment company he was working with declared bankruptcy in the middle of the making of this collection—but he continues to persevere. On the soundtrack to the show was “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” which was a neat summation of the designer’s realization that “life hasn’t promised me anything, and I shouldn’t miss my ’90s teenage years and try always try to achieve things that are not there; I should be happy with where I am.” This also sounds like a bit of Finnish stoicism.There was both a sense of ordered restraint in the collection and a colorful exuberance. Though lineup was called Missing, it answered many wants. Though the designer was thinking of his own family across generations—“[I’m] always missing the ’90s; my parents are missing the late ’60s/early ’70s, and then my grandma is missing the 1930s”—the mix of references felt modern. Headscarves and aprons, inspired by rural Scandinavian farm wear, were transformed into gender-free items that read as fashionable utilitarian, and brown and orange florals had a grunge-meets-camping vibe.Ekroth’s runway debut was an amalgam of the work he has been doing since launching his label. This was the first time many in the audience were exposed to the brand, and for those that knew it better, this approach reinforced core elements of the designer’s personal lexicon, such things as sport and outdoor references, sleeping bag pieces, prints, hairy textures, badges, and handcraft. This season that came in the form of pendant friendship bracelets, a rose-patterned macrame dress, and a rope-net suit overlay, in which Ekroth inserted real roses. The bright reds in the lineup, though likely intended to reference the flower, could check the tomato girl (or) boy summer box as well.
8 August 2023
Storytelling and the endless search for the Instagram moment have become so prioritized in fashion that sometimes it feels like the clothes are secondary to everything that is built around them. In the past, Rolf Ekroth has created collections around his personal memories of summer camp in Finland or his military service there, but for fall 2023 the designer looked back at what he’s achieved as an independent brand. To be clear, his aim was not to create a lineup of “top hits,” but to edit, refine, and innovate. “Every season has brought me to a new place,” he said on a call.Ekroth is the kind of designer who evolves ideas rather than wipes the slate clean every six months. It was good to see the active element, present in his early collections, back in play. This time around the quilted pieces were lighter, both materially and otherwise. An aubergine parka and over vest, for example, were rendered in a sturdy houndstooth, inverting ideas of straightlaced, trad tailoring.Also familiar, and ever appealing, were Ekroth’s layered knits and the intricate macramés made by his talented mother. Among them were fringed poncho-bibs, a balaclava, and, most striking of all, hand-knotted mesh applied over quilting. “I’m apparently obsessed with cord,” Ekroth said in reference to a pair of heavily fringed pants. The collection also features Ekroth’s first leather pieces, which were made from reindeer skins, ethically sourced from Finland.Ekroth is feeling rosier than in the past, a feeling he attributes to consistency and perseverance. “For some reason, every season gives me some new sponsor. So I guess it also grows my self-confidence that I can do this.” This season it was the Finnish company Fiskars. “In school, every student had Fiskars scissors, and we used to write our names in different ways so nobody could steal [them],” he explained. Ekroth wanted this collaboration to be demonstrative rather than passive, and so he made a survival suit constructed in two layers. You see the top layer—a suit of black squares closed on three sides, with the tops left open—in the first look. Each of the pockets contained a pair of Fiskars scissors that the designer’s assistants used to cut open and reveal the underlayer of the survival suit, which was made from a patchwork of fabric swatches that the ecologically minded Ekroth had in his office.It’s a concept and design that fits with Ekroth’s design framework. He called his collectionGalen Värld(Swedish for “crazy world”).
Though some of the prints (inspired by documentarian James Balog’s filmChasing Ice)made reference to the instability of global warming, the survival suit had a sort of harlequin-like appeal, and a childlike zaniness. Ekroth’s not recklessly running with scissors, but he is confidently moving forward and revealing new facets of his talent.
12 January 2023
For the past few years Rolf Ekroth has been going it alone in more ways than one, working solo in a small studio in Helsinki and trying to get his nascent brand off the ground without backing. Spring finds the designer ebullient, having very much enjoyed the company of his four collaborators. Matilda Diletta is responsible for the prints, Santeri Valtanen for the “freehand embroidery” on a top, Ildar Wafin for the nature-inspired silver jewelry, and Heidi Karjalainen, a former Aalto University classmate, for the no-waste sleeping bag reinterpreted from Ekroth’s last collection.Leaning into the personal once again, Ekroth built on his memories of childhood summers this season. The wooden butter spreaders that hang from pants were based on a typical craft project. A woodshop teacher’s kit inspired a nylon jumpsuit, and so on. In terms of evolution, the collection seemed to take the easy pace of summer; there wasn’t much forward movement here. The silhouettes and prints were familiar and the larger proportions worked well. You can count on Ekroth for a ’90s reference, and this season it was delivered in a long plaid shirt, grunge 2.0.Though there were plenty of utilitarian pieces, the collection didn’t read as outdoorsy as it has in the past. The loops on an army jacket held flowers, not ammo. Russia abuts Finland, so the threat of conflict is existential. But Ekroth, who has served in the Finnish military, said, “I wanted to stay away from the serious topics as much as possible.” He’s also increasingly drawn to dramatic materiality. The hand-frayed technique he introduced last season was back and buzzing in bee-like yellow and black. This time it looked more like fringe than fur and took the form of an A-line skirt and bag. The pièce de résistance was a jacket-and-pant set appliqued with handmade friendship bracelets. “We started in late February and we finished it just one day before the shoot,” he said. “It has 230 friendship bracelets on it, and I think over 500 hours of work, so that was a labor of love—[and] very painful fingertips.”
15 June 2022
Thoughts of what might have inspired Rolf Ekroth’s very tactile fall collection, which draws on his own 1990s nostalgia: Its title, Zipper Blues, is borrowed from the lyrics of the Smashing Pumpkins hit “1979,” and the designer, speaking via Zoom, is candid about his own melancholy and struggles that come with being an independent designer. You won’t find any of that in the clothes, however; Ekroth says that this season’s lineup is one of the happiest he’s created.The more carefully you go through the look book, the more there is to wonder at. Ekroth’s love of the craft comes through most dramatically in a hairy pink monster sweater that came about, he relates, by accident. “I had these cords lying around at my desk, and they became sort of my stress toys, so I started to fray them. Then it just hit me: If you saw a lot of these frayed things next to each other, they start to look like fake fur. And that was it; then it was just go time. I think my parents and I frayed cords for over a hundred hours.” Similarly intricate is a crochet sweater that’s then laced by hand; more subtle is the complex patterning of this season’s motorcycle pants that recall fast times Ekroth spent with his cousins.Ekroth’s focus on functionality and protection is timely, but it’s also extremely personal, drawn from a well of personal experience (the designer came to fashion late-ish after pursuing other interests) and his love of Finland. Both of those come together in a tubular macramé bag that looks like a blanket roll for camping, featuring the colors of the country’s flag. Ekroth served in the military and has firsthand experience of how clothes can be functional and convertible. He called on that experience when creating his sleeping-bag looks, which are basically flat rectangles with a zipper and drawstrings that can be manipulated to create volume and form. Also beautifully shaped is an oversized suit of gray wool flannel consisting of an almost cocooning jacket coat with side zips and full pants.Every brand has a sort of accessible entry piece; here it’s a responsibly dyed hoodie. It can be frustrating to think that this is what will sell when there’s so much more to this designer’s work. Going forward, Ekroth might think about skipping the graphic text on his pieces, which can feel superimposed rather than integral to a piece.
Who needs text when you can have talismans, anyway? For fall, this recurring theme takes the form of glow-in-the-dark pins (see look one) sprinkled on a knit set consisting of a sweater, an of-the-moment balaclava, and a short knit overcape. Calling all superheroes…
11 January 2022
Having split with his backers Rolf Ekroth made his debut as an independent designer last season. His spring collection is very much a sequel to the last, in ways material and thematic. The designer continued to mine his interest in rustic Finnish dress vernacular, and found new ways to used pre-existing pieces and fabrics, including collaborating with Aalto graduate Aleksandra Hellberg to use natural dyes (onion skins from grocery discards, madder, and the like) for tie-dye-ish effectsEkroth’s starting point was Finnish Midsummer, which he filtered through his favored hobby horses, horror films, and sci-fi. Lore has it that if a woman places seven flowers under her pillow on the summer solstice she dreams of the one she will love. Ekroth took that tradition and created metal pins with a flower motif and applied them like amulets on a suit. Overall, Ekroth succeeded in evoking the pagan and the futuristic at once.His focus on function and protection felt very current. These preoccupations are longstanding ones for outdoor brands and the military (and they’ve tended to skew masculine). Lately, they’ve seeped into designer menswear and are present in Ekroth’s work as well. He’s not following a trend though; having fulfilled his service duties, Ekroth has first-hand experience of clothes that have to work for the wearer.Shown under the aegis of Pitti, his spring collection was modeled by men and women, which is how the designer is used to seeing his clothes as his girlfriend borrows liberally from his wardrobe. Yet gender, and sex, seem subordinate here to the urgency of survival, even if that means surviving rush-hour, or an all-night rave. These are clothes that communicate that they are adventure ready and “have your back.”In a season of skin-reveals, Ekroth is refreshingly not interested. “I always start the design process with things that I would like to wear myself,” says the designer, who thinks not only about how clothes can reveal one’s identity, but also how they “can sort of hide who you are.” (As a one-time professional poker player, Ekroth must have had to master the art of discretion.) “I would be horrible at doing sexy things because I like to cover people up,” he said with a laugh. “I think sexiness comes from other things.”
29 June 2021
Reset, the title Rolf Ekroth gave to his fall collection, might be a pandemic era buzzword, but this is not, the Finnish designer stresses, a COVID-19 collection. Ekroth believes that the industry needs to rethink its practices and he’s practicing what he preaches: Eighty-five percent of the materials he used this season were sustainable or deadstock. Yet whatResetmeans within the Ekroth ecosystem is something more personal and layered.It’s “actually one of the first English words that I learned, because the reset button was really common on Nintendo and Sega consoles, and I just sort of learned that by pressing reset everything goes back to square one,” he said on a video call.Having broken with his investors, Ekroth is starting over as an independent. This would seem to be his natural groove. Ekroth came to fashionlate, having studied social work, sold hardware, and become a pro poker champion before studying at Aalto University. (He was a finalist at Hyères and a winner of Designers’ Nest.) The hypebeast-friendly codes and eco-consciousness he honed at school and in the earlier incarnation of his line reappear in this collection, only now he is giving it all “a strong Finnish background.”Sandwiched between Russia, Sweden, and Norway, Finland has an agricultural past that is playing a part in present-day innovations around sustainable textiles. Ekroth’s fall collection was supported by Fortum, the Finnish energy giant focused on clean solutions that has developed Bio2, a sustainable textile fiber derived from straw, an agro-waste product.Bio2 jersey makes its debut in this collection, which is built around the theme of straw. A shining metallic jacket and shorts made of the lightest padded material are winners whether or not you make the connection between their honeyed hue and that of straw. Similarly subtle are the prints: one featuring straw flies and the other a “camo” based on images taken of Finnish fields where straw-producing crops are grown.Drawstring details that read as sporty are derived from Ekroth’s study of Finnish vernacular clothing from the 1920s and ’30s, and allow for easy customization. That idea is carried through via details like side zippers and removable linings for coats. Utility, warmth, and watertightness are worked into the collection as well.Tailoring is represented by a wheat-color plaid coat paired with a matching skirt, while hooded Druid-like capes are moreflou.
Ekroth and his creative team dreamed up a cult of straw worshippers as a conceit for the collection film and carried it over into the final looks. One features a top that is a variation on the Finnish Himmeli mobile; the other is a suit covered in amulets—stars, “voodoo” dolls, and other geometric shapes.We’re all in need of a little extra protection these days. Ekroth’s outerwear delivers this, and perhaps the amulets do too, but to this viewer they appear more like signs of good luck auguring a promising career.
1 March 2021