I am asking you for help to fund an ambitious art project that aims to raise awareness about sustainable and vegan fashion. We want more people to shop ethically and to reach more people we are taking the shapes and forms from our physical shop to create rooms of consciousness elsewhere. We are building an exhibition stand – or a portable shop if you wish – that we believe will reach more people and be a catalyst of change to more sustainable shopping patterns. The exhibition stand will be used at trade shows, as a pop up shop and the pieces could also be used separately in other public events.
I have a beautiful shop in central Stockholm, Green Laces, that has an exquisite selection of ethically produced vegan shoes and accessories. The organic flow in the interior design, the ceramics and the placing of the mirrors all work as an inspiring environment that attracts people to approach the phenomenon of vegan fashion. Now I want to raise the bar, turn up the volume, and create a mobile exhibition stand that we can use at trade shows and as a pop up shop. This piece of art will serve as a display for our shoes and accessories, but also an artistic platform where we can meet our customers and share our knowledge about vegan fashion and ethical production. Changing our shopping patterns into more vegan and ethically produced items will have a positive impact on animal and human welfare and the climate at large. Green Laces want to set the stage for that change.
Art is a great tool for communication and making your message stronger. I actually believe that we can change the world through art, when used to encourage and inspire each other to think in new ways. I want to be a part of a change for a better world for more than just the privileged few and this time I want to do it with the help of great art. To realize this vision I have gathered artists that inspire me to do better.
The assignment given to the artists was to materialize the vision of Green Laces’ work and soul of the shop at Hökens gata 7. The exhibition stand needs to house and display the goods that we sell, a place to sit to try on shoes, a mirror and at the same time work as a place of inspiration. In our work group we share an interest in nature and organic forms and the springboard of this project was a fungus that goes by the name of Dog vomit. The artists took inspiration of its form, and the pink table in the shop, and worked towards creating shapes that are functional and inspiring to look at, touch and also use for practical purposes. The exhibition stand will to a large extent follow a monochrome pattern, as the shop, but with a pink color scale originating from the table in the shop. An item remembered by a lot of our customers.
The frame of the exhibition stand will be two large walls of textile drapes that are mounted on a metal construction made for this purpose by Robin Mustonen, who also made the metal shelf in the shop. There will be four pieces of furniture in organic forms: a checkout counter, a hanging furniture/clothes horse, a sitting furniture and a table that serves as a display surface. We have also included Klara W Hedengren who in both her design language and thoughts about body image as well as in her artwork is related to Green Laces.
Ernst naturally moves between his in-depth interest in fashion and his approach to art. As a bachelor of interior architecture and furniture design he has among other things studied the construction of public spaces and the design of public seating, creating forms with aesthetics that inspires to new ways of sitting, thus if you wish, a new lifestyle. Ernst also takes care of the customers in Green Laces shop at Hökens gata and is a natural artistic director of this project
Linnea has worked with film and motion pictures since 2011 and at Green Laces since 2015. Together with Dennis Graben and their art collective Cray, she was in charge of reworking the interior in Green Laces’ shop 2018. Linnea has also made a lot of the beautiful ceramic pieces in the shop.
Robin did a fantastic job with the metal shelf in our shop, so he is the obvious go to for the metal work we need for this project. Robin is dedicated, creative and has a sure instinct for fashionable items.
Klara is a product and interior designer that I got to know through her mirrors. With her exhibition Body Talk she explores the body image and the thought of ones body as political, private, constantly accessible and a means of provocation. We have been offered the opportunity to make a replica of one of her mirrors and put it in this context. The original mirror will end up in our shop in January 2020.
I am a long time vegan and I have been involved in the solidarity and equality movement since my early teens. I don’t know how to look away when I see injustice. The animal rights movement and veganism came as a natural addition to my earlier interest in environmental and union issues. My interest in music and arts lead me to the DIY punk scene and it’s from that I have learned what I know about running a business – if you find something you are passionate about, you don’t need to be an expert, just do it and never apologize for the art you create. I have had an aesthetic vision for Green Laces for ten years, and now we finally have the products to show the world that the vegan fashion brands can be as great as any traditional brand. Now we just need to afford the package to reach a wider audience.
We are pioneers in the field of vegan fashion in Sweden. We have worked hard with very little money to force through the massive wall of noice from the fast fashion industry. The risk we are taking with this project is financial, we put a lot of resources into this project and we are working day and night to complete it. We need this exhibition stand/pop up shop in order to reach as many people as possible to stay relevant as a company and to get more people to shop sustainably. The budget for this project is 200,000 SEK and we need every penny we can get to survive after this. We are still determined to set the stage for what vegan fashion and ethical consumption can look like and we would be super excited to have you on board!