Featured Item - Gudrun & Gudrun
This fabulous fall sweater from Gudrun & Gudrun in the Faroe Islands is hand knitted in a wool alpaca blend and features wonderfully lacy, loopy stitches on the bodice.
Gudrun and Gudrun
Guðrun & Guðrun is a Faroese company, owned by two women, living in the remote Faroe Islands. One of a series of eighteen tiny islands located between the Norwegian Sea and North Atlantic Ocean, they are situated somewhere between Norway and Iceland. Under the governance of Denmark, the islands are host to a population of only around 45,000 souls, with its own language and distinct culture, fueling Gudrun and Gudrun’s creative process, closely linked to the isolation of their location. Happy to showcase the collection around the world, and selling from Japan to Russia, “it’s crucial to come back home to the silence and not be disturbed by the hectic life of fashion”, where tiny and still frames their life and their process. The inspiration comes from the extreme light found on the islands, from nature, old Faroese stories and daily life.
With a vision to simply make a difference, Gudrun and Gudrun’s ambitious intent is to make clothes that live up to the standards of conscious consumers who care about their clothes, their environment and their natural resources. Hand made by Faroese and Jordanian women, and produced from one hundred percent untreated and un-dyed Faroese wool, the Faroese sheep live year round on unfertilized grass. Also working with lambskin and fish leather, Gudrun and Gudrun utilize waste products from food production, while working with a women’s empowerment project in Jordan. Gudrun and Gudrun “believe that women’s empowerment starts with the opportunity to earn your own money”. The epitome of slow fashion, the collections are entirely hand knitted, with hours of time going into each and every piece, with comfort, conscience, and oceans of time, knitted into each piece. All suppliers are European and adhere to environmental and ethical guidelines.
The collection has a whimsical air, with open knit structures, and the beauty and slight irregularity and character of hand-craft. Gudrun and Gudrun achieve a contemporary interpretation of traditional patterns, with a punk, grunge aesthetic, through over-sized silhouettes and layered pieces.
Gudrun and Gudrun also custom designed “Architecture of Loss”, for Stephen Petronio modern dance company in New York, as part of an international collaboration that melds the unique language of Petronio with the sonic worlds of Nico Muhly and Valgeir Sigurdsson, and the ephemeral, hand knitted fashions of Gudrun and Gudrun. The open knit and fragile designs have a temporal and airy quality that wrap the body in delicacy, made from organic and sustainable materials, crafted by local artisans on their native Faroe Islands.
Website: http://gudrungudrun.com
