SL: Why denim? Where did you get your start?

Oskar: Both me and my brother have been working with denim for around 17-18 years together, in the retail business. We both worked at Solo (Swedish denim store) and got more and more interested in the fabric, history and details behind jeans. You became quite fastidious at that time, and even if you liked a pair of jeans you could always find something to complain about. "Yeah they're good, but I would have done like this instead" sort of. We love the fabric, we love the history and stories behind it. We absolutely love the fact that there is a story behind it. We could never have done just a denim-based brand without anything to tell. Everything gets so much better with a nice story behind it.

So finally we decided to have a go ourselves, just to see if we where as good as we thought we where. At that time (year 2000) there where not that many Swedish denim labels around. Acne existed, but struggled hard with shipment and delivery, and it was one year prior to Nudie's launch.

We quickly became aware that it wasn't as easy as we thought. We had some stupid naive idea that producing denim was like eating at McDonald's. You order a menu, add some extras and then you go eat. So we thought it was just to find this denim McDonald's... We could not believe you had to find a producer of denim, then ship it to the factory where someone put it all together and then ship it to a third place before you got it to Sweden. Because of this it took us roughly 6 more years before we got the show going. We didn't want to come just a couple of years after Nudie either, as we didn't wanted to look like gold diggers riding on the Scandinavian wave of success...

Denim has, since our youth, always been interesting. It starts when you are little and wear it just because they are practical and cheap. But then once you start to learn some parts of it, it quickly becomes more interesting. These 6 years were good in another sense too, as we could really think through our strategy and plan for our brand.

SL: "The Scandinavian Wave of success..." is something I want to talk about. Denim in Northern Europe seems to have a really unique spin. There's the interest in design one might expect, but also something a little special... some personality. Is there anything you can point to that accounts for this?

Oskar: I think that Swedish/Scandinavian people, even though a small population, overall have good taste and good knowledge in fashion. And with fashion comes denim as well. When Nudie was introduced they had perfect timing with skinny fits coming back and people wanted something new. Örjan from Cheap Monday did also have great timing for his products. Even though I think that Cheap Monday is not exactly what he wants to do, it was so smart.

But then, is there anything else than those two? We have great brands in Scandinavia, and a couple of them earn their success. But isn't the fact that hypes just builds around a certain area at a certain time, and then moves on? Next year it might be trendy with Czech long-sleeves or Portuguese leather pants.

I think that a lot of the success behind Scandi brands is because of good timing. And also, if we decide to do something we go all the way. We have no problems in selling our soul in order to get what we want. There is a certain stubbornness in Sweden, and we do not want to fail. So we put our heart and soul into what we do.

It is a difficult question to answer, but if I would use three things to explain it, they would be:

-timing
-hard work
-quality and class


SL: I think it is the hard work and quality the create the interest (or, at least the perception of those two things). Your product seems to take most inspiration from the idea of denim as sort of fabric of life. A material to work in. Something that ages with the owner. Something I often wonder is how people define jeans. As fashion item? As workwear? As base for experimentation?

Oskar: I think different people look at denim in different ways. When jeans became fashionable again (around 2001 in Sweden) fashion brands started making denim, only because there was money to make. They did not look at denim as workwear at all, these are the same brands that today make a lot of chinos because that's hyped.
This was the first reason we started with Denim Demon, we where sick and tired of all crappy qualities, bad fittings and most of all: no one cared about anything else other than money. We felt that if things would go on the same way, people would forget about how it all started. How jeans where used in the beginning, all the beautiful history behind it and the feeling a lovely fabric can give you. It's good that denim once in a while becomes fashionable, but it's not ok that all these brands that want to take peoples money under these times.

I think people that buy jeans when it's fashionable, do not care about quality, history or feel. They look at denim as a fashion item and just want to look like everybody else. People that look at jeans as workwear are the ones that are truly interested in the fabric. They know a little more about it than average joe.