Our Time at Stockholm Fashion District and H&M

Our Time at Stockholm Fashion District and H&M 

Our Tour of Stockholm Fashion District

On our first morning in Stockholm we visited the Stockholm Fashion District (SFD) where we met Gunilla Grübb, Head of Public Relations and Katarina Wåhlberg, Head of Customer Relations. Firstly, we received a small scale informal lecture which gave us an insight into the Swedish fashion market and exactly what the Stockholm Fashion District do. The Stockholm Fashion District is the hub for business and creativity within showrooms, buying days, pop-up events and education development for the fashion industry.

We were lucky enough to then be shown around a couple of the floors where international giants including the like of Lacoste have retail space. Unlike the UK, Sweden poses a huge emphasis on their own Swedish brands including Happy Socks and Filippa K and this is very much reinforced by the Swedish culture of helping the society grow as a whole. This was displayed by the huge floor space the smaller scale Swedish brands had in the showrooms. 

In Sweden there is a huge drive for sustainability especially in the fashion industry. The Stockholm Fashion District presented us with a number of sustainability techniques that their brands posses. Nudie Jeans are committed to the making their organisation more sustainable. Nudie Jeans will repair any jeans that you purchase from their brand so you do not have to buy another pair subsequently meaning they do not have produce their jeans at an excessive level which reduces the whole supply. We also saw that its not only the fashion industry which drives sustainability forward. In Sweden sustainability is a way of life, the government have invested millions in green technologies used for heating, transport and sustainable cities in the future. 

H&M Head Office Stockholm

Once we had finished our visit at the Stockholm Fashion District, we then visited H&M's Head Office in Norrmalm, central Stockholm. We met the head of Izabel Hedquist, who is responsible for recruitment and employer branding, specifically in the buying role at H&M. Here we were also given a tour of the in-house trend design studios and their creative areas including their library. Once the tour was completed we sat down in order to establish what exactly was required to be a H&M fashion buyer. This was incredibly beneficial as it allowed us to understand what kinds of qualification, qualities and experience we would need to be employable. It was explicitly made clear of the values that H&M want their employees to have and these included. It was incredible to understand that despite H&M being present in 69 markets, the traditional Swedish values are reinforced through all the countries they operate in, which has been part of their huge success.