Provocative New Thinking — Vintage Wahls
"When the fashion company Wahls hired Kerstin Lokrantz as a designer in 1951, it was like letting a punk or Pippi Longstocking into the studio.
For us today, the clothes she designed appear to be elegant women's fashion of the 1950s cut, but that's because we lack the 1950s perspective. Fashion for teenagers was completely unknown in the early '50s. There was children's fashion and women's fashion. Women's fashion was dictated from Paris. Each season, models and silhouettes from the French fashion houses were copied, with varying degrees of success.
One of the models of the time was Kerstin Lokrantz, and like all other models, she had to style her own curls, lipstick, and powder, bringing her own shoes, handbags, and jewelry to the photo shoots. She took advantage of the opportunities and wore boring garments backward, pinned large safety pins on the shoulders of a jersey top, chose flat ballerina shoes over heels, which she sewed flaps onto, and put her hair in a ponytail. Girls who read fashion magazines copied her style. They soon went on a European tour as teenage models.
One of the firms Kerstin modeled for was Wahls. With a fresh diploma from Beckmans fashion school in her pocket, she became a fashion illustrator for the firm. The family business specialized in jersey and knitwear but also made dresses, and that was what Kerstin began to work with, in her own way. It wasn't just about the cuts; she broke the rules regarding which materials and colors could be used. She opted for solid colors, woven stripes, and prints from Mölnlycke and Stobo instead of flimsy floral patterns. She chose children's fabrics like cadet-striped and small checked cotton. She designed confirmation dresses in cotton embroidery instead of slippery viscose. She conceptualized styles in men's qualities like corduroy and tweed, or marquee fabric. She used colors like pea green, violet, orange together with baby pink and black. And she didn’t shy away from what Paris dictated; instead, she drew ideas from the USA:
'All the American movies, all the songs, how boys and girls could hang out together without constraint. They also had a way of moving that we didn’t have, sitting carelessly, with legs wide apart, standing and hanging, a nonchalant style that was incredibly exciting,' Kerstin has recounted. Buyers and the older generation were horrified; everyone under 20 was stormily enthusiastic, and teenage fashion had arrived in Sweden. The collections were sold to both Harrods in London and Magasin du Nord in Copenhagen.
She spent six years at Wahls. In 1957, Kerstin set out on new adventures, and Wahls recruited new designers, such as Gunilla Pontén and Gudrun Sjödén, but that story will be told another time."
Read more on Kerstin Lokrantz Instagram
Report by Viveca Carlsson for the Magazine Scandinavian Retro
Issue 2, 2019, pages 32-35