The Tamesis
Welcome to The Scoop: a weekly email series in which I ask fashion insiders about the week’s stories. This will be a way for the Vogue business community to synthesize and reflect on the latest headlines every Friday and get a little inside scoop.
This week’s guest is Helgi Óskarsson, CEO of 66°North. 66°North was founded in Iceland in 1926 by a man named Hans Kristjánsson. He wanted to create clothing that would protect Icelandic fishermen and other workers from the extreme weather in the North Atlantic.
Helgi took over as co-owner and CEO in 2011. While all of its down jackets, thermal pants and other cold-weather apparel remains heavily focused on durability and functionality, the company has since also strengthened its ties to fashion and culture. This year marks 66°North’s 100th anniversary, so I called Helgi to see how they were celebrating.
Hi Helgi, any scoop?
We will be opening a new flagship store in Copenhagen in early August to coincide with Copenhagen Fashion Week. The location we take over has been home to Copenhagen’s legendary store Storm for the past quarter of a century. Storm has had a huge impact on the Danish fashion and retail industry over the past three decades. It is truly an honor to be able to move to this location on our 100th anniversary.
So today is also your 100th anniversary! How did this move happen?
When I heard the spot was available, I contacted Storm co-founder Rasmus Storm and we talked. We also developed a very good friendship over time as we could both recognize some of the challenges we faced in the business. Therefore, we also agreed to work together on the transition from Storm to 66°North by creating a capsule collection.
What does this capsule collection look like?
Rasmus has been working closely with our creative team and will be traveling to Iceland this spring to ensure this is exciting for both the incredibly loyal 66°North community and the Storm community. The collection will be very limited. Usually when we do collaborations we try to utilize leftover fabrics, so we did the same with Storm. That’s basically all I can tell you. This will be produced at our own factory in Latvia.
You actually run your own factory. Do you also find disassembly tricky?
