Icelandic Steinunn Sigurðar describes herself as a designer with “a long history in fashion” and you can’t disagree with this definition when you look up at her background.
A Parsons School of Design graduate, Steinunn worked with many important fashion designers and brands, such as Carmelo Pomodoro, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and Gucci.
She directed La Perla’s ready-to-wear line in Europe until 2002 and, since establishing her own label, STEiNUNN, in 2000, her designs have won her many prestigious awards, contributing in putting Iceland on the fashion map.
Having worked in Florence, Bologna and Milan, showcasing at the White Club for Steinunn was a bit like being back among old friends.
In her previous creations the designer was often inspired by the Icelandic landscapes and she tried to replicate in her knitwear the colours, shapes and textures of volcanoes or the atmospheres of the Icelandic seasons.
For her A/W 09 collection Steinunn focused on the Icelandic winter, creating contrasts using fragile fabrics that contrasted with thick wool-based materials, adding layers of hand-cut fringes that danced on the garments to reproduce the fluid movements of the aurora borealis and giving an architectural edge to her jackets and dresses using new and experimental patterns.
Question: What’s the main inspiration behind the collection you presented in Milan?
Steinunn Sigurðar: The collection is inspired by the Icelandic winter. I used for example white fabric to represent the snow, added a lot of details to replicate the textures of the snowflakes and also employed feathers sometimes to evoke the movement of the soft snowflakes falling from the sky. I also tried to reproduce the colours and movement of the aurora borealis in my designs. I can see it outside my living room window in wintertime and it’s so beautiful when you turn all your lights off and sit there watching the irregular shapes of the aurora borealis dancing in the sky like a ballerina, fluctuating and changing every two seconds. I simulated in my designs the colours of the aurora borealis - lagoon turquoise blueish mixed with black to represent the colour of the sky - and then I applied on top of the garments little fringe-like strips to reproduce the movement. All my chiffon dresses also have strips that move when you walk, creating an interesting effect.
Q: Can you tell me more about your creative process and your knitting techniques?
SS: I conceive all my garments as pieces of art as I feel that, when I design, I actually create textures and literally sculpt the fabric. When you knit you start with one thread, but you create your own canvas in a way, so you become your own textile designer. When I work with fabrics I do the same, I sculpt the material before I use it for my designs. Using a lot of different textures and employing new techniques have become my trademarks, though my designs are in general fairly simple. I work a lot with panels using them almost like an architectural floor plan then I figure out a way to do unusual things with them. My designs are very classical because I want people who buy my creations to be able to pull out a jacket or a skirt in ten years’ time and still wear it. I like classic beautiful pieces that do not follow trends as I believe designers, and not trends, should lead fashion.
Q: Do you feel that the art of knitwear has changed and developed in the last few years?
SS: It definitely has. The machinery got better, the factories can do more details and knitting has developed in such an amazing way. You can actually see very creative knitting these days. The first designer who actually came up with revolutionary knitting techniques was Azzedine Alaïa, when he did his knitted dresses that featured Lycra. They were such revolutionary pieces and since then factories and designers have pushed themselves further, coming up with new techniques.
Q: You also teach knitting and sit on the FIT Fashion Design Art Advisory Board, do you have any advice for knitwear design students?
SS: I love giving master classes in knitting because I think it’s important for any fashion design student to know a craft, to learn how to do things well. I was very lucky as I learnt knitting when I was 9 years old and I became a very good knitter, so I would like everybody who follows my classes to do the same. It’s important for every student to realise that, on the first years out of school, it’s so easy to spot how inexperienced they are and this usually shows in their pattern-making and in their choice of fabrics and I would recommend everybody to actually get a job or an internship somewhere to learn as much as they can and get stronger in their designs.
Q: Do you feel that Iceland’s geographical position protects it from trend-oriented fashion?
SS: Absolutely, this is one of the reasons why I love being based in Iceland. We don’t have high fashion brands, so you don’t tend to look up to anybody but yourself when you design. When I worked in New York the fashion world swallowed me because it’s big and powerful, but in Iceland we are so small that nothing can actually swallow me except creative forces such as art, music and other designers and, in this way, I can actively contribute in building up the local fashion industry. I think Iceland has created a trend on its own because it doesn’t follow anybody else.
Q: How are Icelandic designers copying with the crisis?
SS: Iceland has probably got the worst financial situation in the world at the moment. Three of our major banks crashed and in a small country like ours, this has left an amazing financial earthquake that shook the country up like you wouldn’t believe. Unemployment rates went up and I don’t think people really know what is going to happen from month to month, so we are just living day by day, but you can see that we have hit the bottom, so I think that around the middle of this year we can start rebuilding things and actually decisions are being made at the moment towards this end, yet this situation has affected all of us.
Q: What will you be concentrating on once you are back in Iceland after your Milan showcase?
SS: I’m going to Gothenburg where I’m closing my exhibition at the Röhsska Museum of Fashion, Design and Decorative Arts. The event opened last November and is going to close down with one of my lectures.
Images courtesy of Steinunn.
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