Danish born, Stockholm based designer Rigetta Klint is founder and creative manager of the virtual Magazine, design store, and PR and brand building platform SLOWFASHIONhouse.com.

 

What is SLOWFASHIONhouse?

SLOWFASHIONhouse is an international company with a virtual presence, started in 2008, that works with PR, brand building and online sales of old school luxury from a platform that features a large but careful selection of products in the categories bathroom, fashion, fashion accessories, jewelry and living.

 

SLOW – who invented the concept?

The SLOW FASHION and SLOW LIVING concepts are clearly derived from the Italian SLOW FOOD movement, with its characteristics of quality and sustainability. The renowned Danish designer Rigetta Klint – founder of SLOWFASHIONhouse – was among the first to carry the concept over to the fashion and living universe. In her earlier store inCopenhagenshe advertised the slogan “Slow Fashion Now and Forever”. When Rigetta Klint decided to start the world’s first virtual department store in 2008, she chose the SLOW idea as the fundamental concept, be it for fashion or living – and the name SLOWFASHIONhouse was obvious.

The site was launched in August 2008 and marks the first concrete, professional manifestation of the SLOW FASHION and SLOW LIVING concepts in the world.

 

How does SLOWFASHIONhouse understand the SLOW concept?

SLOW is an economic necessity, for the individual as well as for society. We all have to understand that overconsumption is meaningless, our Earth cannot sustain it.

Of course, quality is going to cost more. We all have to buy fewer high-value, slow-to-consume products.

Slow design is about a richer interaction between designer and maker; maker and product; product and user. Slow living is a glimpse of a different world – more sustainable – and an opportunity for business to be done in a way that respects workers, environment and consumers in equal measure.

It means only buying or selling things that one cannot live without and which provide the world with value, aesthetic or functional – not things that you want just for a brief pleasant experience, but things that you want to bring with you on your onward journey through life.

Besides that, it is our personal conviction that the aesthetics of fashion and living is an interesting form of communication, and a fundamental need  just like love, fresh air, food and drink.

We prefer style to fashion, old school luxury.

 

What are the characteristics of a SLOW (or SLOWFASHIONhouse) product?

SLOW represents awareness in the choices you make, as consumer, as designer and as producer.

A SLOWFASHIONhouse product is likely to be part of the next generation of heirlooms.

(Obviously, most Bathroom products won’t last for generations, but on the other hand they must represent common sense, solid research, and value for money as well).

A SLOWFASHIONhouse product brings to the world rather than taking from the world, in both a functional and an aesthetic sense.

In relation to trends, a SLOWFASHIONhouse product is not retroactive but forward looking.

It is produced with respect for those who manufacture the product, the resources consumed and the consumer who will buy and own the product. If these tradeoffs fall out in favor of ecology, the product will be organic.