What lies beneath: under this little hut in is an aquarium where you sleep while being eyeballed by fish.

On the shores of a Swedish lake, it’s not unusual to see a small red hut. To see that shack in the middle of a lake, even in a country known for its unusual accommodation offerings, is a little less common.

It’s true, like something straight out of a Swedish detective novel: the hero is being pursued by his nemesis, so he takes refuge in the Utter Inn - tricky access and great visibility mean no one gets near without being spotted. Even better, the guestroom is out of firing range.

Why? Because the accommodation is hidden underneath the hut, reached only by ladder down a vertical shaft. You sleep underwater “with the fishes.”

The hut-aquarium is more cozy and simple than spacious and super-deluxe, but what it lacks in cutting-edge design (IKEA predominates, unsurprisingly), it more than makes up for in complete and utter (sorry) privacy. Not to mention the obvious wow factor.

Showing off your booty while lounging on the wooden deck chairs and skinny-dipping in the lake are both perfectly acceptable, too.

Plus, the eco-conscious: solar panels on the roof power the lighting (it’s only open from April to September), and the dry toilet keeps the lake clean.

Rates from $328 including tax, transfers, and use of inflatable boat for trips to the nearest (uninhabited) island.

Images: Atlas Obscura; Mikael Genberg; Västerås stad; Wayfaring

Places & Spaces is a travel guide that will inspire you to carve out a vacation on your calendar. All of the gorgeous locations and accommodations in our guide share our concern for the environment. From tent glamping to lavish built environments, fair warning, you’ll feel compelled to pack your suitcase.

The Grand Tour and beyond.

We’re all familiar with the rolling hills of Tuscany, the cliffs of Santorini, the Eiffel Tower in Paris. But Europe is so much more than classic postcard images. As the continent’s Eastern half becomes more accessible, spots like the ports of Dubrovnik, the caves of Slovenia, and the Renaissance towns of the Czech Republic are becoming more popular as travelers venture off the traditional backpacker’s route. As everywhere, sustainable tourism practices are needed to protect this region’s intense natural beauty.

(above) Appenzell Innerrhoden, Switzerland

Pembrokeshire, Wales, UK

Telc, Czech Republic

Cyprus

Bua, Sweden

Reykjavik, Iceland

Istanbul, Turkey

Mariazell, Austria

Kiev, Ukraine

Crete, Greece

St. Petersburg, Russia

The Pyrenees, Aquitaine, France

Wick, Scotland

Aalesund, Norway

Berlin, Germany

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland

Capri, Italy 

Karkonosze, Poland

Postojna Cave, Slovenia

Paris, France

Margam Park, Wales, UK

Dresden, Germany

Barbarin, Spain

Berg, Austria

Florence, Italy

Copenhagen, Denmark

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Luster Kommune, Norway

Porto, Portugal

Boka Kotorska, Montenegro

Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia

Lanzada, Spain

Castelluccio di Norcia, Italy

Moscow, Russia

Skradinski Buk, Croatia

London, England, UK

Lake Baikal, Siberia, Russia

Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Santorini, Greece

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Warm up cold winter days with a glass of Glögg.

With or without snow there’s not too many things as heart warming as glögg (Swedish traditional mulled wine) around Christmas. The rich smell is so welcoming it’s no wonder it’s such a successful way to treat your friends. Last winter I had to warn my guests that even though the wine was served hot it was not low on alcohol.

Like other Swedes I’m used to buying glögg already spiced at the Systembolaget, which is the one and only company that can sell liquor in Sweden. Systembolaget has an impressive selection of wine from all around the world and they have over 40 different kinds of glögg, both with and without alcohol. There is even a white glögg which is commonly served cold as an apertif at parties around Christmas. With a selection that great it’s hard to even think of making your own unless you’re a Swede living abroad. Being one of those people, I started making my own and can’t ever imagine going back. At Christmas I want my own glögg. And the glögg has to be done with some drama by caramelizing the sugar.

Glögg

One bottle of red wine (a decent full bodied wine such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah)

Spices
3 cinnamon sticks
One teaspoon whole cloves
One teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 orange peels
5 whole cardamoms
One small piece of ginger, chopped
20 raisins
A couple of dried figs

For caramelizing
one cup (240 ml) rum
1/3 cups (75 ml) brown sugar

To serve with
Blanched almonds
Raisins

Heat up the wine but be careful, the wine should not boil. Drop all the spices into the warm wine, turn the heat off and let rest covered for at least 4 hours (best overnight).

Sieve the spices from the wine and heat it up in a saucepan. Again make sure it doesn’t boil. In the meantime prepare a stainless strainer filled with the sugar. When the wine starts to get hot, place the strainer over the saucepan. Pour the rum over the sugar and light the alcohol steam below. Let some of the sugar drip into the wine mixture before adding to the wine (if you wait for all the sugar to melt, the alcohol will disappear with the flames). Take the saucepan from the heat and cover with a lid to stop the flames. If you think the glögg is too sweet you may add some more wine or rum.

Serve the glögg in small cups together with some blanched almonds and raisins in every glass. Glögg is also great with gingerbread cookies.

Illustrations by Johanna Kindvall

Scandinavia was consistently inspiring in 2011.

After looking back on a year of Shelter posts, we realized that our obsession with Scandinavia was embarrassingly obvious.

This year saw a steady stream of sustainable innovation, progressive thought, and great design coming out of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and their not-officially-Scandinavian-but-Scandinavian-in-our-hearts cousins, Finland and Iceland.

Here’s a list of eight things that set our hearts a-flutter about Scandinavia this year.

They know how to strike the perfect balance between indoors and outdoors. Rooms at the Juvet Landscape Hotel nurture a relationship with nature, while remaining minimalist and sophisticated.

They can pull off a girly microbrewery. The Mikkeller pub in Copenhagen underwent a feminine design transformation at the hands of Femmes Regionales. The result was delightful.

They make rest stops not so scary. Norway’s government-sponsored a National Tourist Routes program engaging architects like Margrete Friis and Peter Zumthor to design lookouts, concession stands, restrooms, picnic tables, and other sustainable rest stops along scenic country roads.

They champion post-secular worship and design. Helsinki’s Chapel of Silence provides a place for urbanites to meditate in silence, without religious affiliation. It’s also gorgeous.

They design treehouses that look like UFOs. Sweden’s Treehotel consists of five eco-hotel campsites designed by leading Scandinavian architects in the woods of northern Sweden.

They give their factory workers, even the fast furniture ones, five weeks of paid vacation per year. Workers at IKEA’s Sweden plant also get paid $19 per hour, and the whole country offers free healthcare, elderly pensions, and a host of other social goodies. Compare that to workers in IKEA’s Danville, Virginia, plant, who get paid $8 an hour and are often forced to work overtime at the risk of being fired.

They can look perfectly at home in a house with white floors. A peek inside designer Tine Kjeldsen’s home in Denmark reveals the perfect combination of exposed wood, raw metal, plush plum upholstery, and flawless white floors.

Their idea of luxury involves cycling, yurts, and designer hot tubs. As it should. Activities and design at Southern Norway’s eco-friendly Canvas Hotel celebrate their motto: “You don’t stop playing because you get old, you get old because you stop playing.”

Image: Leong Him Woh

Swedish Advent coffee gatherings and the must have baked good of the season.

The season of Advent is upon us. In Sweden, Advent is holy, not just because it represents a religious tradition, but more practically it celebrates and honors light. Every Sunday through Christmas a new candle is lit, until the four long candles in the Advent candlestick are burning in unison. Throughout the month of December, windows blaze with the traditional triangle shaped candelabra, bringing a hue of gold to the otherwise dark and long winter nights.

Just as candles are an integral part of celebrating Advent, so are pepparkakor. Gingerbread cookies are the staple of Swedish Advent coffee gatherings and celebrations and the must have baked good of the season.

I grew up, every December, carefully rolling out gingerbread dough. In the early years, it was an awkward dance of pushing and pulling a rolling pin about half my size. Flour tended to go everywhere, and I would end up grinning with dough pieces stuck all over me. Yet my mother simply left me to it, and if I rolled too hard and the dough got stuck to the countertop, I was forced to find a solution myself.

Dust with flour, roll, pull up dough, flip over and repeat until just the right thickness to slice into with a Swedish cookie cutter. These cookie cutters were carefully kept in a large tin – which had at one point in the early 80s held Danish butter cookies certainly purchased at duty free on one of her connecting stops in Copenhagen. Hearts, pigs, Christmas gnomes, the classic gingerbread couple; I loved, and still love, sorting through and picking out my favorites. Feeling lazy? There were always the Franska Pepparkakor to make, a much simpler process of rolling out a log and slicing the cookies. In fact, if Swedish Jul for Dummies were a book, this recipe would be in it.

But pepparkakor are one thing, and a pepparkakshus (gingerbread house) is quite another; same dough, same concept and yet when you move from cookie to house, baking takes a completely different level of culinary creativity.

Enter, my father. Not known for his kitchen prowess – to his credit he is well versed in the world of exotic, black teas – gingerbread house making was his turn to put his carpentry and mathematical brain to use in an area normally left to my mother and I.

In his mind, a pepparkakshus was a serious matter. This is why, two decades later, we still have the same designs, meticulously drawn onto graph paper and cut out with an X-Acto knife, kept in the same, yellowed folder, “Jul” marked in red pen on the outside.

He put the same energy into crafting our annual pepparkakshus as he put into building our own house. Case in point: the pepparkakshus was always constructed with melted sugar, a binding agent that no child under the age of 12 should ever play with. But once dad had constructed the house, I got to decorate it, and he would watch as I sloppily poured icing all over the top, at first attempting to make a design and later resorting to the excuse “I just wanted to make it look like it snowed on the roof.” Fortunately like any good father he was never upset at his daughter’s decorative destruction of his architectural masterpiece.

Of course every kid-friendly holiday treat has to have an adult alternative, and beyond the pepparkakshus, my father’s other seasonal claim to fame is a mean batch of glögg, Sweden’s mulled wine. Whereas expertly crafting gingerbread houses was probably more of a fatherly duty, glögg was a personal masterpiece, picked up at about the same time that he wandered into the Nordic lands and stumbled upon my enchanting mother.

There has never been an Advent that I can remember that he didn’t have a batch brewing in our cast iron, red enamel pot- a kitchen item that’s probably as old as I am. During the month of December it sits there on the back left burner, ready to cook up another round. For not being a man of the kitchen, I can call my father at any given moment and he can rattle off his well-mastered glögg recipe as if he were reciting multiplication tables, which is helpful since even in a studio apartment, December is not December without the smell of glögg warming and a plate of pepparkakor.

Two years ago my father sent me a gingerbread house kit from a trendy grocery store that will remain nameless. The result was disappointing. No planning and no process, without even getting to the taste issue and the fact that the kitchen didn’t smell like spices. Tradition requires commitment, and for the month of Swedish Advent that commitment is making a good batch of pepparkaksdeg (the dough) and baking out a batch of cookies and constructing a house, no matter how old you are.

Now to find the glögg mugs.

Pepparkakor (Gingerbread Cookies)
(About 75-100 cookies)

¼ cup (50 ml) heavy cream
2/3 cup (150 ml) light syrup* or molasses
Almost one cup (200 ml) sugar
3 ½ oz (100 gram) butter
One tablespoon ground ginger
One tablespoon ground cloves
One teaspoon ground cinnamon
One tablespoon ground cardamom
One teaspoon baking soda
3 cups (700 ml) flour (+ some for the rolling out)

Melt the butter and the syrup on low heat. Let cool before adding the other ingredients. Work the dough well. It’s important that the spices are freshly milled. Let the dough rest overnight in a cool place so the spices have time to fully develop their aromas. The resting will also make it easier to roll out the dough.
Roll out the dough and cut out shapes with gingerbread cutters. Bake in the oven at 375ºF (190ºC) for about 6-8 minutes. Keep an eye on them as they burn easily.

This dough can also be used for a gingerbread house. Just roll it out slightly thicker. Have fun!

This recipe is a modification of the original at the Swedish shop Svensk Hemslöjd in Stockholm.

*You can buy light Syrup (ljus sirap) at Ikea. You can also use ”Lyle’s Golden Syrup” that you can find in British food stores.

Franska Pepparkakor  (French Gingerbread Cookies)

1 cup (almost 250 ml) almonds, chopped
7 oz  (200 g) butter
1/2 cup  (120 ml)  sugar
1/2 cup (120 ml) molasses
4 tsp ginger
4 tsp cinnamon
4 tsp ground nutmeg
4 tsp cardamom
2 tsp allspice
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp baking soda
3 cups (700 ml) flour
Cream butter, sugar and molasses.

Mix dry ingredients with almonds, then combine with butter, sugar and molasses. Knead together with your hands.
Roll dough into cylinders, about 12 inches long and wrap in wax paper. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Cut dough into 1/4 inch slices. Bake at 380 for 10-12 minutes.

This recipe is adapted from the Swedish classic: “Sju sorters kakor.”

Illustrations by Johanna Kindvall

The Treehotel in Sweden features unique, futuristic camp sites.

Imagine the scene: you’re walking through a forest in northern Sweden, when suddenly you come upon a collection of bizarre objects suspended from trees: a mirrored cube, a UFO, a giant bird’s nest. Have you been abducted into a Dadaistic art installation?

Relax, it’s n0t a flashback to a youthful overindulgence of banned substances, a sojourn through William S. Burroughs’ Interzone or even a Trekkie bootcamp. It’s a 21st century designer eco-hotel-camp called Treehotel.

Treehotel’s green credentials are exactly as you’d expect for a Swedish hotel set in a forest: renewable energy provided by hydroelectric power from the nearby river, LED lighting and water-efficient sinks, and combustion toilets. In most units, waste is heat-blasted at 600C; in the Mirrorcube, your poop gets frozen, while the heat from the freezer’s element is used to heat the room in winter. Dead smart, those Swedes.

The five ”treerooms,” designed by leading Scandinavian architects, are all different inside as well as out, with simple furnishings. The UFO, accessed by a ladder underneath has spacey print fabrics, while the ultra-realistic Bird’s Nest is circular with tiny round windows in its pale wood walls. The Cabin is much more conventional, but also larger - a rectangular box with huge windows and an outdoor deck, while the Blue Cone overlooks the river.

The Mirrorcube is like a live work of art. Its outer surfaces show constantly changing images of trees and sky, which you can appreciate from a roof terrace, a more zen alternative to watching TV. Another building houses a sauna and hot tub (this is Sweden, after all). The bad news: this is also where the showers are located, since none of the treehouses has its own tub or shower. This is the Swedish idea of glamping: fab interiors offset outdoor plumbing.

Meals are served, and guests greeted, in a guesthouse run by one of the owners named Britta.

Rates from $573, including tax, breakfast and unbeatable dinner table stories.

Photos: Peter Lundstrom, WDO; Frank Updates via Harper’s Bazaar

Why go with just plain chocolate cake when you can add a hint of mint?

This summer in Sweden I was unhappy to find out that the small local egg farm up the road had closed down. I wasn’t sure why, and it all seemed odd as there was one rooster left, who was crying out loud, and sadly. Then one day, I spotted a mother sow in a field close to our house. She was proudly walking around in the mud with her new born piglets all around her. The farm also had free-range chickens, ducks and lambs. I was happy again.
The second or maybe third time I came there, the lady of the house said she had run out of eggs. I asked if I could order some for later that week.

“It’s impossible,” she said.

At a farm like theirs you can’t predict how many eggs the hens will provide. Some of the hens had also started to sit on their eggs. I felt both happy and sad at the same time. Sad that I had to walk home empty-handed and happy that someone listens to a hen’s nature instead of my craving for eggs.

“Oh well,”  I said and was about to leave when she said:

“I have duck eggs. They are great if you are making sponge cake.”

I went home and made the best Sticky Chocolate Cake I have ever made.

Sticky Chocolate Cake with a Bite of Mint

2 eggs (or one large duck egg)
1 cup sucanat*
4-6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder (preferably Valrhona)
one teaspoon salt (less if using salted butter)
one cup milled almonds
4 oz butter
about 5 drops of peppermint extract**

some mint leaves (for decoration)

Whisk eggs and sucanat together in a bowl. Stir in the milled almonds, cocoa powder and salt. Drip a few drops of the mint extract (or essence, see below). Stir around and adjust with more mint to your taste. Add the butter and stir until smooth. Pour the mixture into a greased 9” spring form.

Bake the cake in the oven at 350 F (150°C) for about 15 minutes. The cake should just be set on top and sticky inside. Let the cake cool down. Decorate with some fresh mint leaves and serve as is or with some whipped heavy cream.

If you don’t like mint in your chocolate you can easily switch it to something else. Anna Brones here on Ecosalon spices her Sticky Cake with cardamom and serves it with a cranberry orange salsa. If you are craving for more chocolate this Chocolate by Brand over at David Lebovitzlist will keep you busy.

* Sucanat is a brown sugar type extracted from sugar cane. Its perfect to bake with and gives cakes and cookies a richer taste. In the US you can often find Sucanat in organic shops. If you can’t find sucanat you may use muscovado sugar or even regular brown sugar instead. When I’m in Sweden I use farin sugar which works really well too.
** I couldn’t find mint extract so I made an essence by soaking mint caramels with a shot of vodka over night.

Illustrations by Johanna Kindvall

SlideshowReporting from Sweden, Johanna Björk shares the fascinating story behind the creation of a new book on Chanel.

In 2010, photographer-stylist couple Peter Farago and Ingela Klemetz-Farago were given full access to the coveted Chanel archives, which contains couture treasures from the 1920s through today – a dream for anyone in the fashion business, as it had long been for the Klemetz-Faragos. Some of the clothing was deemed so precious it required Chanel-employed handlers to come along for the shoots.

Several well-known models from the Scandinavian and Baltic countries, such as Freja Beha Erichsen, Helena Christensen, Frida Gustavsson, Dorothea Barth-Jorgensen, Iselin Steiro, Edita Vilkeviciute, Sigrid Ågren, Suvi Koponen, Kirsi Phyronen, Carmen Kass, Siri Tollerod and Caroline Winberg, took part in the project and every creation and surrounding — each more fantastical than the other — were chosen specifically for each model.

Close to 300 looks were shot and the result can be seen in the 384-page book Northern Women in Chanel — a new staple for any vintage fashionista’s coffee table. Best of all, a portion of the proceeds goes to Save The Children, a Swedish NGO working to safeguard the rights of children across the world.

The book is accompanied by an exhibit, currently on view at Stockholm’s Fotografiska museum, where these gorgeous photographs can be admired in superscale. Fotografiska itself is worth a visit for anyone even remotely interested in photography, as it is one of the largest museums in Europe dedicated to this art form. Fotografiska is housed in a former customs building right on the water, designed by famed Architect Ferdinand Boberg in Art Noveau style. When I visited, other exhibits on view included a Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective, Chinese artist Liu Bolin’s amazing The Invisible Man and Eleanor Coppola’s Circle of Memory.

Anyone who claims that fashion photography is not art will have to reconsider after seeing this portfolio. The classic, timeless, barren and, sometimes, melancholic settings often elude a vibe that is more Bergman than Vogue. Farago is inspired by opera, dance and art, and this strongly comes through in the images, which have a certain theatricality to them. Overall, it’s a very modern take on classic fashion, the clothing looks more like it belongs in another universe than another era. My only criticism is that they would have chosen more older models; it would have been a nice way to add more character to the project and differentiate further from the fashion glossies.

All photos © Peter Farago & Ingela Klemetz-Farago

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ColumnTaking a Swedish approach to appreciating our everyday food routines.

I’ve been traveling for a few weeks, and in doing so have failed to keep up with the latest and greatest in food news that seems to inundate the blogosphere on a daily basis. But a girl needs a break every now and then, and so the computer has been off, and the brain partially so as well. Fortunately, we all need sustenance, and although I haven’t been keeping up to date on what’s new in food, I have been eating a lot of it.

This is relaxing eating. Summer enjoyment. Sitting down with friends and family and enjoying everything from basic open faced sandwiches to fancier fried chantrelles. Not fretting over what to throw in the stir fry for dinner because I’m exhausted after work. No, this is food for the sake of food.

Sometimes I will ask for a recipe and jot it down in my red Moleskine, sometimes I just sit and enjoy, not thinking about what went into making what I am eating, and sometimes I get riled up and launch into a diatribe on the failings of the American and global food system – trust me, it’s part of the dinner table charm.

I’ve also been scouring every daily newspaper that sits next to my cup of tea and skim through the food section where there’s always a new recipe. Really they just make me want to throw dinner parties. And then in the evening I feel a pang of jealousy as I watch trailers for the new television series by one of my favorite Swedish food personalities, Tina, thinking to myself, “I want a cooking show too.”

What I’ve come to realize is that even taking a break, I still can’t get away from food. None of us can. No matter where we are or who we’re with, we have to eat. You may be a freak about it as I am – every meal I eat I make a mental list of how easy it would be to make at home and how I could even tweak it – but when it comes down to it, food culture permeates all of our everyday lives.

Unfortunately, we often don’t take the time to enjoy it.

I read an article during one of my famed tea and morning newspaper sessions about the author of the new cookbook Mat Under Bar Himel (Food Under an Open Sky). Beyond the poetic name that seems to sing summer and vacation ( it’s on the shopping list for before I head home), the author Michael Krantz points out that eating outside is a way to better appreciate our food and our friends. “When you eat outside you’re forced to talk to each other in a different way. When you’re inside, there are a lot of other distractions,” he said to Dagens Nyheter.

Combine that idea with the fact that we know that eating is better for us when we’re in positive social settings, and it’s no wonder that summer fare tastes and feels so wonderful.

I won’t even attempt to make any arguments about how Swedes are more conscious about what they eat than Americans – they are also facing a staggering obesity epidemic, fast food burger chains are on the rise, and a trip to the grocery store tells you there are plenty of refrigerators stocked with prepared foods ready to be thrown into the microwave.

And yet, there’s a consciousness about food that hangs in the air, not what it is or where it comes from, but that it’s important to eat, three times a day, every day, and that sometimes, it’s worth investing a little time in making something good. Even those who don’t like to cook peruse cookbooks to put together respectable dinner parties. Food has a certain level of importance and deserves our attention. Which is why the Swedish refrigerator and pantry tends to be stocked with the essentials: hardtack, dense bread, yogurt, meat, cheese, butter, vegetables and most likely a bowl of fruit on the kitchen counter or table. Basic but essential.

And when it comes to eating that essential food, time is valued. Breakfast, even as small as coffee and a macka (open faced sandwich), is a must, lunch breaks are lunch breaks, to be had in the break room instead of in front of the computer, and on weekends, dinners often get a little glorified, if nothing else, to celebrate the days off.

There is nothing extraordinary or trendy about this approach to food, on the contrary, it’s very simple. This is what makes it so that food and the enjoyment of food plays an integral role in everyday life, instead of being a mere after thought. Which means there’s thought put into which sandwiches you make to take on your afternoon outing, and an insistence on finding a good spot to sit down with your coffee thermos and enjoy the sun. The time to eat, even when you’re not eating anything fancy, is not to be taken lightly.

So forget complex recipes, forget the latest gluten-free baked goods, just take some time to eat good, simple food with friends, maybe even throw in a bottle of wine for good measure, and give honor to the sustenance that your body needs.

Because if we all have to eat, every single day, why not make it an enjoyable routine?

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

Images: Anna Brones

ExclusiveAn interview backstage at Berlin Fashion Week with Swedish sustainable designer, Mika Modiggård.

The industry’s biggest names converged in Germany’s capital last weekend for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Berlin. Historically, haute centers like New York, Paris, and Milan have defined global garment trends, and these cities’ gridiron prominence make it difficult for emerging designers to make inroads in high-concept couture. Berlin, still gritty over 20 years after the Wall dividing East and West fell, is a different story altogether, and has become a prime platform for new, less-established designers to showcase their collections on an international stage. Swedish-born, Berlin-based fashion designer Mika Modiggård is one such artist.

With astounding industry momentum and only 23 years under her belt, Modiggård is a rising star in Europe; this year, the Swedish Fashion Council ranked her as one of the best up-and-coming designers at Stockholm Fashion Week, and she presented her business and designs to the Crown Princess of Sweden. On Thursday, Modiggård kicked off the catwalk for the Lavera Showfloor in the Kosmos building on Karl-Marx Allee, a monumental socialist boulevard that divides the Mitte and Friedrichshain boroughs of Berlin. She debuted her collection, Rollercoaster, for over 1,000 attendees, featuring sustainably-produced clothing crafted from upcycled vintage-leather and ethically-sourced silks.

Sweeping change has defined 2011 for Modiggård, a theme that manifests in her latest designs: Her life has been a professional and personal roller coaster this year. Post-runway show, EcoSalon sat down backstage with the designer to talk about her career and latest collection.

Mika Modiggård

Modiggård explained that she has been hand-producing and selling clothing since she was 15 years old, when she began experimenting with a sewing machine and creating projects with scrap and secondhand shop garments she deconstructed for auto-didactic purposes: “My education wasn’t formal, but rather one of reverse engineering,” Modiggård said. Growing up in downtown Stockholm, she would frequent used-clothing stores, picking up items that she would disassemble at home, in the process learning how to recreate the shapes and patterns herself. After “one hundred so-so projects,” she received an internship and, summoning all her young-adult courage, asked if she might sell some of her own designs in the shop.

Out of bits of leftover cloth, she stitched together quirky little wallets with a set sales price of only 10 euros. Later that year, she and her father went out for a quick bite to eat at, of all places, a European McDonald’s. At the eatery, a fashionable young woman stood in line in front of Modiggård; to pay for her meal, the young woman pulled money out of one of the billfolds that Modiggård had sewn. At that moment, the designer said, “I knew that I could make it, and that this is what I was going to do.”

Four years ago, Modiggård relocated to Berlin, a cultural destination for indie artists from around the world, who are attracted by the city’s cheap rent for apartments and studio space. She set up shop in the city’s Neukölln borough, a district with one of Berlin’s highest immigrant populations and began fusing her existing eco-fashion sensibility with a harder-edged style. The result? Rollercoaster, a collection that bespeaks the designers current state of mind.

“The past year has been a figurative roller coaster ride. My designs burst into the public eye, garnering me attention I could never have foreseen. The limelight has been overwhelming, but more so an inspiration to push my work into riskier territory.” With the challenge to up the ante creatively, Modiggård retained her loyalty to Scandinavian minimalism but began fusing this design tradition with influences from Berlin’s burgeoning hip-hop scene and also street fashion, which tends to be hard, dark and with little whimsy.

With Modiggård’s gravitation toward experimentation has also come a deepening of her commitment to ethical production of her garments. Her company motto - Fashion, but not at any price – translates her ecologically-minded philosophy toward her craft, one in which environmental and labor conditions are just as important as developing her unique brand of clothing that gives you extreme street cred.