Whyred was born out of the need for a brand embodying the modernist credo of dress wear for the stylistically conscious. The idea was to develop a distinctively personal elaboration of mod culture’s street-smart elegance. We understand Modism as clean dressing under difficult circumstances, a paraphrase of Peter Meaden’s famous quote ”clean living under difficult circumstances”.
Whyred was and still is about raising aesthetic awareness and creating new expressions. With the vision of building a label that could give the consumer a modern experience and exceed the expectations with regard to design and quality, friends Roland Hjort, Lena Patriksson Keller and Jonas Clason founded Whyred in 1999. The name came from chief designer Roland Hjort’s grandfather, the prominent Swedish artist Sven ”X” Erixon. Asked in a radio interview in the early 50s to tell his favourite colour, Sven answered: ”Red”."Why red?”, the interviewer retorted. Known for his rich palette of colours Sven dryly quipped:”Well, blue then”.
Taking good tailoring, contemporary music and the art world as its point of departure, Whyred has earned the epithet "the Indie super label”. Authentic and visionary, Whyred appeals to the confident and adventurous consumer. Our ambition is to create intelligent luxury - elegant garments with a casual luxurious eel as opposed to the brash and the vulgar. Dressing to express your personality in a subtle, surprising manner is more easily said than done. So, what is it that actually happens in that blessed moment when dressing up for a night out and suddenly after adding or removing a piece of clothing you look great? Exhilarated, you instantly feel good about yourself. But is this only the fleeting reward of instant gratification? We believe that something more profound is at stake here. Something that we aim to achieve with our philosophy of style. Clothes should, simply put, assert those personal traits that the wearer likes best. Thus, every Whyred garment is made with bringing out the wearer’s personality in mind. It’s about establishing the precarious balance between identity and look, individual as it is from person to person.
The big city has a special place in the heart of Whyred. It is a dynamic playground where people meet and the new happens. For us, style is as naturally part of the urban environment as bars, nightclubs and cars. In fact, the many different expressions of style are very much what accords a city its identity and life. Its breath. Style carries the markers of the future. It tells us where we are heading. It is both a reflection of tendencies and a carrier of change in itself. The mod culture that has influenced our way of thinking to such a high degree is a perfect example of what we mean by a sophisticated urban style. Sartorial dressing in the metropolis.
The art and music world is a key to understanding Whyred. Collaborations with contemporary artists and musicians thus stress the importance of our legacy while strengthening the Whyred brand identity. The occasional nod to the Beatniks and mod culture serves the purpose of asserting our influences in order to reinvent the Whyred look and style. We visit the past not to repeat it but to explore paths not taken.
