It’s been a little bit more than a year that I have been writing and interviewing people for Le Journal Curioso, and I am enjoying every bit of it. Interviewing people is something I have always loved doing for my projects; I enjoy talking to people about their experiences and lives. I have learned the most fascinating things around a glass of red wine - you can take the girl out of Bordeaux, but you can’t take Bordeaux out of her - at dinners. That said, I consider interviewing a real art I haven’t mastered yet - but I am working on it. Not having studied journalism sometimes makes me feel I miss the traditional training, yet I also think it gives me the freedom to tackle a topic with people differently.
So far, I have transcribed all the interviews of The Underrated Fashion Professional Talks, but I also want to include a podcast in this series. As a massive listener of podcasts—my favourites are around fashion, culture, and identity—I find that the audio format, though edited, is a great way to grasp someone’s personality and work better. It also allows for more extended conversations while letting you know better the type of interviewer I am.
For this first episode of The Underrated Fashion Professional Talks, I talked with , a Malmö-based Swedish journalist and fashion expert who, like me, enjoys exploring fashion in depth. Alva and I bonded over a note I left that read:
After exchanging DMs on Substack, we talked on Zoom about:
How English-speaking journalists - read mostly Americans - portray Scandinavian fashion and the industry landscape in that part of the world that is geographically close to Europe yet culturally different from it.
Fashion journalism in Sweden and fashion criticism in general.
The fashion scene in Scandinavia and the archetype of the Scandi girl.
All podcast episodes of The Underrated Fashion Professional Talks will be available for everyone, meanwhile, one in two of the written interviews will be paywalled, so upgrade now!
About the different fashion weeks in Scandinavia
“We really only have one big fashion week left. We did have Stockholm fashion week, but that was maybe 10 years ago, and that was when it was really, really big. Acne studios, Diana Orving showed, etc… you know, really big names in fashion that are still big, but then they kind of outgrew the fashion landscape in Scandinavia, because it's not that big. So now, we have Copenhagen fashion week, where kind of, if you're, if the brand identifies as a Scandinavian brand, like Ganni, Holzweiler, Stine Goya, whatever they do and wherever they're from, they show in Copenhagen. So, the fashion capital of the Nordics of Scandinavia is Copenhagen.
There's an Oslo fashion week, it's not as big. We had a fashion week in Stockholm, as I said, and back then, it was quite big, but we don't really anymore. They tried to do a digital fashion week for a while, and then there was Fashion X by the Swedish Fashion Council, but that was only for one year.”
About Finland not being part of Scandinavia and fashion in Finland
“We should do something on Finland, because there's so much talent, and there's so much design coming from there, but we have so little representation fashion-wise, and I think it has to do with the language. Finnish is very, very far from Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian, which are all quite similar. So, we don't really have the same way of communicating. I think it starts from there, but then there’s a whole ocean between Finland and Sweden [editor’s note: the Bothnian sea lies between Sweden and Finland], apart from the north, where not many live, there's no big cities in the very north of either Sweden or Finland, so I think it has to do with that, but no, I agree, we should talk about Finnish fashion design more.
[…]
I just checked up now, and there is a fashion week in Helsinki called Fashion in Helsinki. I’ve never heard of it.”
About having local correspondents covering Copenhagen Fashion Week
“Why shouldn't you have a correspondent at the fashion weeks? It doesn't really have to be someone who lives in Copenhagen either. I wouldn't say that I'm the best choice for it, but there are fashion journalists in Stockholm, in Oslo and in Helsinki who could easily go there by train, know the designers and where the ideas come from.”
Do you think publications like the New York Times Style, Vogue, etc., would benefit from having local correspondents in the fashion capitals? Above all, do you think it is feasible, given Vogue's attempt to localise its different editions?
1/The Underrated Fashion Professional Talks Podcast: Uncovering Scandinavian Fashion With Swedish Journalist Alva Nyblom