I might not have posted anything on menswear so far, but I actually love writing about it and plan to do more posts on this topic. I even have a small collection of Italian menswear magazines for tailors from the ‘60s (though my sewing skills are rather poor…) which I often leaf through to get inspirations and ideas from. What I do like is good quality and stylish stuff, but, unfortunately, I often see a lack of it in the streets. It’s easy to cringe on a Friday or Saturday night in Glasgow city centre, after seeing hordes of men wearing, even in polar temperatures, horrendous shirts outside their trousers pretending they’re not cold at all. 
Things are not better in Italy where many young people opt for sagging pants that often end up causing embarrassing accidents in the streets or go for the trashiest fashion adopted by rich but utterly unstylish footballers. A couple of months ago Giorgio Armani criticised the lack of decent dressing in Italy and I couldn’t really disagree with him.
I’m pleased to see, though, that in Sweden things are different, also thanks to a young brand born out of the frustration of not being able to find good quality and fashionable clothes and accessories for men at an affordable price.
Founded by Håkan Bruce, Thomas Strömberg and Oscar Brynolf, Ulterior Motive offers fresh alternatives to men’s style. 
The brand produces shirts, neckties and tie clips, cufflinks, money clips and wallets, all characterised by a minimalist style and an attention for small details. The brand’s shop is located in Industrigatan 7B and it’s a small and neat haven for menswear, with a small and cool selection of stuff. Want to know more about this young and hip brand? Here’s my interview with one of the brand’s founders, Håkan Bruce.
Do you think there is a bit of a competition in Sweden between big fashion companies such as H&M and small labels?
Sweden has a couple of big labels like H&M and the likes but there are also a lot of small labels trying to come up. There are a lot of labels of our size that are just starting and there are also a few middle players such as Acne Jeans and Nudie Jeans. I think H&M also get a lot of their inspirations from small labels. In Sweden everybody shops at H&M, but the majority of people buys there the base items for their wardrobe, such as plain shirts and trousers, but when they want something a little bit more special and alternative like a party suit they go to boutiques. 
You don’t go to H&M to buy something that is alternative, because you know that everybody else will have it. H&M might have hundreds of different ties, but if you look at them they’re all pretty much the same, while the designs that we have on our ties and accessories are limited.
What prompted you to start Ulterior Motive?
Frustration. We are three guys and we all really like the tie as an accessory for men, but a lot of men think ties constrain you and do not see them like accessories that you can actually show off. Besides, if you look at the ties that you can find in regular stores, they are pretty much dull plain ties, so we decided we had to do something that hadn’t got to be necessarily provocative, but that had to be cool. 
In Sweden at the moment there is a small hype about the tie, men who are my age, in their late twenties, like to dress up and wear a shirt and tie. But we want young men to know that you don’t have to wear a tie like our fathers did, that is in a very formal and stiff way, you can be elegant and casual at the same time. Our label is called ‘Ulterior Motive’ because this is our “ulterior motive”, to use particular accessories on a daily basis and in an ordinary way. Another product we came up with is the tie clip. Usually most tie clips are either gold or silver and they are very dull or are produced in kitsch shapes such as golf clubs, guns or something like that. Now this is a useful accessory, it has a function, but, we thought, why not making it beautiful doing it in colours so that it can dress up a tie? So we figured out we’d do clips in bright ‘80s-ish colours that combined with a black tie or a colourful tie.
What’s your background?
I have a Master in Science and Electronics, but I’ve always been interested in creative stuff such as photography ever since I can remember. When I finished studying I started working with an IT consultancy firm, but then I got this chance and I thought this was a fun and potentially good experience that I couldn’t miss. I asked my friends Thomas and Oscar – who I have known for years – if they wanted to join me and they said yes. One of them is an anthropologist and the other studied industrial design, which is probably the closest profession to fashion, though still very different. So far we were very well received, almost every magazine for men in Sweden has written about us, but also American and Asian publications. We’re pretty new to the business as we didn’t have any fashion business before and we didn’t even study fashion, but we see it as one of our points of strength. We do mistakes that people who are trained in fashion maybe don’t do, but, on the other hand, we have skills and ideas they might not have. I also think we are bringing something positive and new to the world of fashion.
Did you meet other fashion designers while working on the Ulterior Motive lines?
Through this business we’ve known a lot of people. In Sweden most of the fashion businesses are located in Stockholm, there are a few other labels in the rest of the country, but the majority of them are here. We took part in the Rookies & Players, a small Stockholm Fashion Fair, and this was a very good opportunity to get to know other small labels similar to us and do some networking. We also collaborated with Swedish designer David Wiksten who designed for us three ties with mechanical prints inspired by his fascination with cars. Generally, people here are very fond of small labels, one of my fave ones is Gram, which is trying to do something new with shoes and I love their attitude. There aren’t too many clothes labels for men, but I think the market is growing, and especially in bigger cities such as Stockholm, Göteburg and Malmö, you can see that men are taking more interest in fashion and in the way they dress. 
You provided ties for French band Versari, how did you get in touch with them?
It started from the Internet. I don’t think our label would have been able to take off without the Internet. In the beginning, at least, the majority of our sales were from our website and we also found most of the stores that sell our stuff outside Sweden through the Internet. We found Versari on MySpace and we thought they made good music. They also liked our ties, so we decided it was a good idea to provide neckties for them.
Would it be correct to say that details are the most important thing in your designs?
Yes! We love small details: for example we use small prints on the back of a tie that only the wearer can see or subtle prints that can only be seen if you look very carefully at the tie. Once I was wearing our skull tie at a party and I ended up talking to a guy for maybe 20 minutes, before he exclaimed ‘Hey, you’ve got skulls on your tie!’ We also like to add small details on shirts such as a few coloured lines around the collar and cuffs, to make standard shirts more interesting or add text under the buttons, so that if you have a few buttons open you can read only a part of the text and perhaps get people more subtly interested in what you are wearing.
Are you planning to expand your line of products?
Absolutely. We recently added wallets, belts and socks to our main line. We’re taking it slow as we don’t want to risk too much as we’re learning as we go and we have to be a bit careful, but the final vision is to have a complete line of menswear.
What’s your best selling item?
We sell most of our shirts in our Stockholm shop, as a lot of people want to try them on, while we sell most of our ties on the Internet. We also have quite a few women who buy our ties. We get a lot of feedback from people who tell us that, when they wear our ties, they get a lot of compliments and comments which is good for us as we feel that’s our whole point, producing something people want to look at.
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