Stem’s Sustainable Knitted Items Win 2024 Wessel & Vett Style Prize

MILAN — “The mission with Stem is absolutely to scale back waste in trend and to open folks’s eyes to the manufacturing course of,” stated the model’s founder and textile designer Sarah Brunnhuber.

As for her personal eyes, they had been teary as she tuned in a video name on Thursday night, proper after studying she received the annual Wessel & Vett Style Prize. Designed as Denmark’s reply to the LVMH Prize, the award that was beforehand bestowed to the likes of Anne Sofie Madsen, Cecilie Bahnsen, A. Roege Hove and Saks Potts, is geared toward fostering sustainable manufacturers and supporting the native and worldwide development of probably the most promising trend skills in Scandinavia.

Brunnhuber beat three different finalists — Skall Studio, OpéraSport and Sunflower — along with her distinctive trend proposition and quiet rebelliousness of her imaginative and prescient. 

Dedicated to transformative change within the trend business, her model Stem gives artful clothes with distinctive uneven fringes which are developed through superior weaving, environment friendly reducing and meticulous stitching to scale back waste. The model forgoes trend’s seasonality and follows a slow-paced manufacturing, specializing in making designs and shapes that may stand the check of time, starting from fringed shirts to textured clothes.

Brunnhuber offered her zero-waste woven work, enterprise technique and general imaginative and prescient to a jury at Henrik Vibskov’s studio in Copenhagen. Along with the Danish designer, the panel included the prize’s founder Nina Wedell-Wedellsborg; Copenhagen Style Week’s chief government officer Cecilie Thorsmark; Ganni cofounder Nicolaj Reffstrup; Marimekko’s inventive director Rebekka Bay and inventive consultants Silas Adler and Shila Gaonkar, amongst others. 

“Sarah’s progressive zero-waste textile system is a groundbreaking achievement in sustainable trend,” learn a choral assertion from the panelists. “Based mostly in Copenhagen, Stem focuses on transparency and using eco-friendly supplies to reduce waste. It’s an ideal instance of how trend is evolving, the place manufacturing, design and branding come collectively to create a future-focused enterprise. For us on the jury, Stem is greater than only a model — it represents the way forward for the style business.”

“Sarah’s dedication to sustainability and creativity makes her work actually stand out, and this award is a recognition of her visionary strategy. We stay up for seeing how Stem continues to form the business for years to come back,” continued the assertion, which ended by recognizing Brunnhuber “as a real pioneer” and with the jurors providing her “assist as you progress ahead.”

“This implies a lot, it’s an enormous stamp of approval for my work: it makes me really feel so excited for the way forward for Stem and in addition the way forward for the style business. I simply really feel actually inspired and happy with myself,” Brunnhuber informed WWD.

As winner of the accolade, which was previously referred to as the Magasin du Nord Style Prize and counts the assist of Crown Princess Mary of Denmark, the designer will obtained a money award of 500,000 Danish krona (or 67,000 euros) and, as a part of the continued sponsorship and collaboration with Copenhagen Style Week, complimentary slots on the official present and presentation schedule for the style occasion’s fall 2025 and spring 2026 seasons. She will even have the option take part in Copenhagen Style Week’s symposium in London throughout London Style Week in June 2025.

Brunnhuber has a transparent imaginative and prescient on how she intends to take a position the prize cash. 

“For the final eight months or so, I’ve been working in the direction of beginning my very own weaving mill right here in Denmark… which is a big job to tackle, but in addition fairly thrilling,” she stated. She shared the idea with the jury as a part of her presentation, which additionally featured key items of the three collections the designer developed since 2021; materials and hand-woven samples inspiring these clothes in addition to containers with samples from the final 5 years and a guide retracing the model’s journey.

“[The mill] has all the time been behind my thoughts. It might be absolutely the dream to have my very own manufacturing,” she stated. “The previous few years of working with the present manufacturing system has simply made me understand how a lot it wants to alter: we have to produce one thing like 75 % much less as an business to succeed in our local weather objectives however the methods aren’t in place to do that. So the concept with the mill is that we are going to attempt to effectively produce much less and work in the direction of extra round practices domestically right here in Denmark.”

The designer famous there are at present no weaving mills for the style business within the nation. “It’s solely within the ‘60s-‘70s that there was truly a thriving textile manufacturing tradition right here, which utterly disappeared, so it’s actually thrilling to attempt to convey that again,” she stated, underscoring that the mission is to attempt to “make systemic change throughout the business and in addition actually domestically to create that infrastructure right here.”

She added an academic facet will flank the undertaking to “work with college students, manufacturers and anybody who needs to be taught extra about technical manufacturing and make manufacturing extra accessible” because the overarching aim “is absolutely to assist others produce extra responsibly.”

The undertaking will likely be an extension for Stem, which Brunnhuber intends to additional strengthen by investing a part of the prize funding to broaden the workforce. “Now it’s largely me and I’ve some assist however the considered having anyone else working full time in the direction of the identical aim is a big alternative,” she stated. “That can actually enable a number of the opposite analysis tasks that I do and different strategies that I’m engaged on to flourish whereas I’m creating that mill undertaking, in order that I can divide my time between the 2.”

Experimentation is on the core of the model’s ethos. Stem originated from Brunnhuber’s progressive work at Design Academy Eindhoven, the place she began weaving in her first semester and hasn’t stopped since. 

Her massive epiphany was when she watched the 2015 documentary “The True Value” on quick trend. “I do know it was a giant turning level for lots of people however for me it actually had this large affect and once I watched that, I couldn’t unsee what I had seen and it made actually clear to me that I needed to dedicate my profession to enhancing this business.”

She developed her zero-waste manufacturing method throughout her commencement semester and afterward she industrialized it. She progressed by collaborations in London and Prato, Italy, earlier than ultimately settling in Copenhagen. 

At the moment, she continues to take time all year long to weave and discover new strategies and supplies, resembling elastic wool, which assist her “justify to develop new collections.” 

But the largest problem in operating her indie label now continues to be coping with the established order at-large. “It’s very tough to try to do issues in a different way the place there are simply very previous methods at play and that stands throughout the business. It’s not simply in manufacturing, it’s additionally how the wholesale system works, how retail works, how the calendar of the yr like there’s so many methods that form of have to be dismantled a bit bit and we’re attempting to do this whereas making worthwhile clothes,” she stated.

“It’s arduous. I feel I discover it tough simply to justify making something new in any respect. In order that’s a problem, as a result of there’s a lot being produced,” she continued.

Whereas distribution continues to be at early phases, Stem’s collections are primarily accessible on-line on the model’s e-commerce. Brunnhuber additionally revealed that subsequent week she is going to open a showroom proper subsequent to her studio in Copenhagen to allow native clients to expertise the model and materials and check out on the collections upon appointment.

All boasting totally different approaches to trend, the competition’s 4 finalists had been revealed throughout Copenhagen Style Week in August and chosen based mostly on standards resembling design expertise, sustainable credentials and viable enterprise technique.

Spearheaded by the Wessel & Vett Basis and now in its twelfth yr, the prize maintained the current deal with integrating extra established manufacturers and skilled designers with up-and-coming skills launched final yr. To wit, Skall Studio by sisters Julie and Marie Skall and OpéraSport’s design duo Stephanie Gundelach and Awa Malina Stelter are by now regulars on Copenhagen’s trend calendar and the Danish trend scene. As for Sunflower, the modern menswear model was based in 2018 by Ulrik Pedersen and Alan Blond.