Stockholm-based online magazine

What I did:

Based in Stockholm, I wrote fashion, entertainment and culture articles, and opinion pieces.

Sweden’s Young Fashion Stars: Lina Michal

Swedish skies are bright with up-and-coming fashion stars. YLC spoke to Lina Michal, one of the country’s future fashion trailblazers, about her rocketing career.

Stockholm’s elite design college graduates have increasingly been scooping up awards as well as prized post-graduate places at prestigious international fashion colleges. Lina Michal, a Beckman’s School of Design graduate, recently claimed the Vogue Young Vision Award 2013 after receiving a galactic 90,000 votes in the world-wide fashion authority’s annual search for “young talent with a clear design vision” (VOGUE.it).

“I’m feeling a lot of gratitude. It’s fantastic.” Michal told YLC.

She beat out top-notch design competition from fifty-five countries, including ten finalists from prestigious design colleges in Denmark, Italy, Russia and the UK.

Part of the Vogue Young Vision prize is the chance to design and sell an eponymous fashion collection with top online fashion retailer MUUSE. Michal has been designing and redesigning her MUUSE collection since winning the title back in October.

“It’s based on the collection I entered into the competition which was supposed to be for fall/winter but we looked at it and thought it would work so much better as a spring/summer collection.

Apt as Michal’s winning collection was actually her final graduation project shown at Beckmans right at the start of summer 2013, in May.

“We’re working to interpret the collection into ready-to-wear and to distil the core of it into something that can be more easily worn.”

With the title Heathen Hearts, Michal’s last catwalk presentation before graduating from the Stockholm design school – one of raw, organic romance – was tinged with the kind of mood only a nation that spends its winters cloaked primarily in darkness and bitter cold would understand.

“I wanted to make something with a Scandinavian point of view but that was also about something other than functional minimalism,” Michal explained to YLC. “I wanted to convey the feeling of something joyful and organic with just a notion of something dark and raw.”

At times, the collection was so in tune with sweetness and romance it would have been easy to get swept away with feeling and forget to appreciate the exquisite craftsmanship and design skill on display.

After digging into her Swedish heritage and exploring important traditional Swedish festivities such as Midsummer, bound in nature, Michal created something outdoorsy and Scandinavian in a far more organic sense than the click-and-fit Ikea practicality synonymous with Swedish design and favoured by so many Swedish fashion designers.

Michal used clusters of beads resembling fruits of the forest to adorn voluminous gowns while swathes of fabric in overgrown shapes and mounds of petals were testament to a Swedish designer not afraid of spending time, crafting ideas and labouring for an industry she is clearly excited to now be a part of.

“I’m currently interning with Opening Ceremony in New York, I’ll be there until April,” Michal explains.

Leaving school definitely means a new chapter and I’m taking it a little bit as it comes. I’m eager to explore different aspects of the industry – and I’m having fun.”

Lina Michal’s Heathen Hearts inspired collection will be available to purchase on MUUSE.com in 2015.

This is just one of many articles I wrote for Your Living City, please visit my Authory profile or ask to see more.

City Hideaways: Stockholm’s Secret Gardens

Need to escape the city? YLC’s Victoria Hussey discovers the hidden gardens within the city, where Stockholmers grow their own produce, potter among flowerbeds or enjoy getting away from it all.

Nestled away amongst the city’s high-rise apartments and busy motorways are Stockholm’s secret gardens; unexpected leafy havens where a community of gardeners busily potter away pruning, planting and harvesting.

Over the past one hundred years, members of the allotment compound have transformed their potato plots into beautiful gardens and a blossoming community.

Eriksdalslunden kolonilotter (or allotment compound) start at Skanstull on Ringvägen and runs alongside the south slope of Söder to Årstaviken bay. Take a walk down its narrow gravel pathways and it would be easy to forget you are in a capital city save for the hum of traffic from nearby Skanstull Bridge.

Eriksdalslunden is one of the city’s largest allotment communities and because of its position by the water, even boasts its own microclimate perfect for growing exotic species such as Ginkgo (Maidenhair tree), Davidia (Handkerchief tree), Morus (Mulberry), Bamboo, Magnolia and peaches.

The city’s allotments, founded by Stockholm nurse Anna Lindhagen in the early 1900s, were introduced as a way of helping Stockholm’s poor grow their own vegetables and reap the benefits of outdoor pursuits.

While some choose to continue in the tradition of growing edible delights – onions, potatoes, fruits, herbs and lettuces – others choose to carpet their plots in wild roses, rhododendrons and peonies.

Founder of community gardening project, The Peterson Garden Project in the United States, LaManda, who is married to a Swede, discovered Tantolunden’s kolonilotter of on a trip to visit family in Stockholm in 2010.

“There’s a charming “mini city” atmosphere, which is delightful and it’s inspired my work in Chicago to connect people through community gardening. I’ve been trying to talk my mother-in-law into getting on the waiting list for a kolonilott ever since.”

Recent figures show there are around 25, 000 of these allotment gardens throughout Sweden. In Stockholm, other central pockets of allotments are situated in Tantolunden (Årstaviken, also on Södermalm), Söderbrunn on northern Djurgården and Karlbergs – Bro, Kungsholmen.

Each plot consists of a tiny house (or stuga) and a small area of land behind picket fences. Each house is typically small – the size of a garden shed but far prettier – with a couple of rooms, a sink, perhaps a table and chairs, and areas for potting tools. Many have rain barrels for water supply and some have even been transformed into liveable summer houses.

“My girlfriend’s parents, who live in the north of Sweden, stay in ours over the summer,” Stockholm dentist Stefan told YLC.

“The cabin is about 24m² so it’s not very big but we have water and lots of facilities inside so it’s definitely liveable!”

If this rather idyllic summer living appeals, be prepared for a wait. In some cases, the prospective green-fingered have had to wait up to twenty years to own their own inner-city haven. For others the waiting has been less (around three to four years). There are also allotment compounds further from the inner city for those who don’t mind the journey to the suburbs. More info on Stockholm's allotments can be found here (in Swedish).

“The last owner of our plot was about 85 years old and hadn’t been able to do much in the garden for a while, so we had to spend a lot of time and money fixing it up, including repainting the cabin,” said Stefan.

“And there are a lot of rules. Every September a guy visits the lot to check it – if he’s disappointed he’ll ask us to repaint or fix something so it stays looking nice.”

But after all the toil, when it the summer season finally arrives, allotment owners reap the rewards of their hard work.

“In the summer, we sit in the garden and drink beer!” Stefan told YLC with a laugh.

“But more importantly we have a five-year-old and he spends the summer running around the garden. And in Midsummer, we all [the community] get together and do all the traditional Swedish things – dancing around the pole, just enjoying being outside!”

If you don’t fancy the lengthy waiting list and hard-work, there’s still time to view these secret gardens before they hibernate over the dark, cold months, bursting into life again next spring.

These are just two of many articles I wrote for Your Living City, please visit my Authory profile or ask to see more.