Danish Dark Nuances

Annhagen love black. Actually that’s not strictly correct, they also happen to love white and grey, but it wouldn’t have made such a good opening line. What’s certain is that lifeiscarbon® loves the dark and avante-garde style of the Danish fashion brand’s clothes for men and women. To quote the company’s own words; "these are designs for the twilight hour, the time between day and night, between a busy daily routine and the temptations of the night". Take a look below at a short selection of designs for women from the Spring/Summer 07 collection.

The annhagen brand was founded by the company’s Creative Director Dianna Opsund Bay in 2004, although these days the company has three additional owners Kenneth Opsund Bay, Kristian W. Andersen and Jacob Kleberg. Whilst still a relatively young fashion label, the company has already gained a loyal following around the world. annhagen currently have two showrooms, one in its home city of Copenhagen with a second in Tokyo, and distribution in Austria, Benelux, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.

A couple of weeks ago, annhagen’s Autumn/Winter 07 collection had it’s first official runway show at the Odd Fellows Palace in Copenhagen and is currently on show at Rendez Vous in Paris (1-4 March).

source: lifeiscarbon.com

Designer Toej Online is a shop exclusive designer clothes and fashion accessories online. Offers a large collection of Polo Ralph Lauren for men & women. All their Ralph Lauren products are 100% authentic.

Style With A Conscience

What’s not to love about the Danish eco-fashion label Noir? Starkly monochromatic and sharply tailored collections designed to satisfy consumers with a social as well as a fashion conscience.

Apart from creating beautiful clothes Noir’s vision has also led them to create a new cotton fabric brand called Illuminati II with the intention of producing a new luxury fabric from raw African cotton for use by leading luxury fashion brands around the world. More importantly their initiative has led to the establishment of the Noir Foundation, a fund that allocates a high percentage of revenue from sales to support the African cotton workers as part of the Proud Harvest supply chain. By providing essential medicine and micro loans, the so-called Humane Business Model provides much needed support where it is required the most.
As if all of this wasn’t enough, Noir happens to be a member of the U.N. Global Compact adhering to human rights, labour safety, environment and anti-corruption politics and is also affiliated with The International Labour Organization.

Noir is the brainchild of Peter Ingwersen who was previously a Brand Manager for Levi’s RED and Levi’s Vintage before becoming a Managing Director at Day, Birger et Mikkelsen (another successful Danish fashion brand).

We love the way that Noir have treated the cotton they use to create what they call cotton couture. Specially treated cottons including a coated cotton that gives the impression of rubber, a honeycomb cotton with sculptural qualities and cotton silks with a luxurious feel.

source: lifeiscarbon.com

Designer Toej Online is a shop exclusive designer clothes and fashion accessories online. Offers a large collection of Polo Ralph Lauren for men & women. All their Ralph Lauren products are 100% authentic.

Eco Lux Fashion

Creating luxury fashion by combining together stylish design, social awareness and ecological sustainability is never an easy task but somehow that’s precisely what the Norwegian brand FIN has managed to do. Given the company philosophy at lifeiscarbon®, we applaud the set of principles that underlies everything that FIN create. Their latest collection, entitled Hommage a la mouvement, sees the brand moving into a luxurious direction that the company has dubbed Eco Lux. In other words - luxurious looks achieved via ecologically friendly means. Voluminous silhouettes, intricate pleats and beguiling embroideries create a sensuous, tactile and luxurious look whilst organic materials, fair trade principles and 100% carbon neutrality ensure ecological and social friendliness.

FIN is something of an innovator in terms of environmentally sustainable production and their collections are 100% carbon neutral, only use high quality organic cotton and fair trade principles are followed throughout. The company recently introduced two interesting new fabrics: wild silk and organic baby alpaca. Wild silk is a handspun silk fabric with a beautiful and rich texture. Nonviolent harvesting lets the silkworm turn into a silk moth without killing the worm as is often the case in normal silk production. Organic baby alpaca, one of the most precious and rarest luxury fibers around, is incredibly soft and silky to the touch.

Per Åge Sivertsen, FIN’s chief designer, clearly designed the collection with movement in mind and the result is a confident yet careless look. Despite the luxurious looks, lifeiscarbon® love the hint of masculinity that’s found in the tuxedo inspired blouses and dresses together with the biker inspired jackets and coats.

source: lifeiscarbon.com

Designer Toej Online is a shop exclusive designer clothes and fashion accessories online. Offers a large collection of Polo Ralph Lauren for men & women. All their Ralph Lauren products are 100% authentic.

Miss Stella's Feeling For Fashion

Danish fashion brand Stella Nova we were reminded of one of our favorite pieces of Scandinavian fiction “Frøken Smillas fornemmelse for sne” (Miss Smilla’s feeling for snow). And that provides a rather feeble excuse to recommend in passing the novels of Danish writer Peter Høeg. More on his work (some essential Scandinavian reading) at a later date.

Stella Nova was founded in 2002 with the declaration of the rather bold intention “to inspire and create joy in everyday life through the development of an accessible range of designs for women who want to make a difference.” Since the company’s growth in 2008 is predicted to be more than 50% it seems as if Stella Nova is more than living up to its mission.

Intriguingly, inspiration for the brand comes from the imaginary character of Stella Nova and the universe she inherits. A universe seemingly filled with love, unpredictability, eccentricity and strictness. In reality, the company is run by co-owners Trine Skoller (Creative Director) and Henrik Spandet-Møller (CEO) together with over 20 dedicated colleagues in beautifully preserved townhouse in the centre of Copenhagen.

source: lifeiscarbon.com

Designer Toej Online is a shop exclusive designer clothes and fashion accessories online. Offers a large collection of Polo Ralph Lauren for men & women. All their Ralph Lauren products are 100% authentic.

Exemplary Danish Fashion

Launched back in 2001, the Danish fashion brand Eksempel have quickly become one of lifeiscarbon®'s Scandinavian fashion favorites. Radiating an understated elegance permeated by an air of contemporary aesthetic thought, Pernille Winther (designer and founder of Eksempel) creates sophisticated yet highly wearable designs with her extraordinary working of pattern and cut, combined with her poetic sense of fabric and silhouette.

Eksempel presented its first solo runway show during last month’s Copenhagen Fashion Week. Opening quietly with light silk tunic dresses predominately in black but building to a riotous close featuring harmonious multi-colored graphic silhouettes, successfully contrasting plaster white, ochre yellow, mid-tone grey and vibrant purple. In between, Winther proposed a modern and poetic way of visualizing the female form, demonstrating that she is a designer more interested in loose fits and casual styling than tight, sleek body conscious dressing.

Tunic inspired silhouettes may not be particularly new but Eksempel’s AW08 collection somehow feels very current, with a timeless and highly wearable quality to it. "The foundation for each new collection is the previous collection," Winther explained. "My designs are not meant to be seasonal, but classic statements to be used across seasons".

source: lifeiscarbon.com

Designer Toej Online is a shop exclusive designer clothes and fashion accessories online. Offers a large collection of Polo Ralph Lauren for men & women. All their Ralph Lauren products are 100% authentic.