By Marie Birde
Phoenix from the ashes
WHETHER IN HER professional life or at home, Swedish fashion designer Carin Wester has no problem with starting over. In 2016 her beloved brand folded, only to be revived by Swedish department store Åhlens. Her many fans were jubilant when the news broke that the company would recreate Carin Wester classics such as her bomber jackets, parkas, knitted sweaters and long shirts. “When I first saw how many different items they had taken into the stores, I burst with joy,” says Wester. “It was so powerful.”
It’s no wonder that Åhléns decided to take Wester on as creative director in 2018. Today she is in charge of the company’s private labels Carin Wester, Wera, Minimarket kids and Åhléns. “My daily work consists of a lot of different things, from creating the visual goal for the department store to heading up the design team, working with the visual merchandising team and curating the different brands into something unique,” says Wester, shooting a glance towards her ‘secret’ storage room.
She doesn’t want to show us the inspiration for her new collections though, she wants to talk us through the interior of the new Oscar Properties apartment she lives in with her family. The building was once a brewery, which makes sense of the five-metre-high ceilings and window of the same size. Today the space is characterised by serenity – Wester succeeds in creating a sense of wellbeing wherever she goes, and in no time she has made her new home both beautiful and personal.
“For each move, we sell almost everything we own,” says Wester. “Obviously no inherited items or things we are particularly fond of, but everything else. It has become a fun thing to create a whole new style for each apartment.” Having grown up in the fashion world, where a finished collection is equivalent to closure, it’s no surprise that Wester is so flexible with home and hearth, finding it easy to start over. “Home and fashion are the same,” she says. But there is one piece of furniture that she never lets go of – her three-metre-long table by Piet Hein Eek, built of driftwood
