London-based Edda Gimnes (29) was born in Oslo and says she grew up in a very creative home. Her graduation collection at the Royal College of Fashion in 2015 won an award under the auspices of the British Fur Trade Association (BFTA) and good reviews in Italian and British Vogue and international headlines such as ‘A Norwegian Fresh Out Of Fashion School Designer To Watch’ created international attention. She is indeed a Norwegian designer for tomorrow.
The works of the Norwegian fashion designer Edda Gimnes typically combine disparate elements, from pink knitting with gold and light blue embroidery to bold prints with elements of fur. She is fascinated by textiles in all sorts of combinations. In 2016, she was awarded, in competition with 220 fashion designers, the award ‘Designer for Tomorrow’ during the Fashion Week in Berlin. After earning prestige in the cut-throat world of fashion, Edda continues to create eclectic designs embraced by followers all over the world.
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An honest intimate and stylish look
The most precious stage of designing a collection is for many fashion designers the time to make mistakes, erase and restart without the pressure of onlookers. Edda embraces this pressure offering an honest, intimate and stylish look into her creative hand through her collections.
Edda says that the turning point in her struggle at College in London came after she had bought a garbage bag with hundreds of old photographs at a car boot sale in Wimbledon. Among the photographs was a nude album from the 1940s. The photographs were the inspiration for her winning collection.
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The ragpicker
“I enjoy using old objects and things that have gone to waste, so for my collections I have been “The Ragpicker” of my own projects, she said in an interview. Edda’s cutting-edge innovative futuristic vision is simultaneously curated with audacity and precision which makes it beautifully bizarre. “I use my opposite hand to get a ‘naïve and hand rendered’ black-colored sketch and transfer that onto white cotton fabric used through the collection,” she said.
Gimnes stretches large canvases across the floor in her London studio and draws straight on the durable fabric to create spontaneous lines. But really, she is a very colorful person and is a designer who does more than interpret existing trends and create scandi-minimalist designs. “I want to continue to push boundaries and be playful while making things most people can use,” she says.
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Things with story and soul
Edda explains that she simply loves things with a story and soul. She hopes that people are able to make up their own narrative when looking at her design. “Instead of starting with the pattern, I start with my illustrations and then make the pattern accordingly,” she once told Vice/Intel’s international platform The Creators Project.
Edda Gimnes aims to explore uncharted avenues and enthusiastically allow her inherent voice to shine through.
All images © Edda Gimnes
Feature image (on top): Designer Alber Elbaz and the winner of the fashion talent award ‘Designer for Tomorrow’ by Peek & Cloppenburg and Fashion ID, Edda Gimnes, are seen on October 19, 2016 in Paris, France.
A Norwegian Designer For Tomorrow, written by Tor Kjolberg