“Outer space and undersea…the final frontier. These are the voyages of the MINIMARKET enterprise. Its S/S 2010 mission: to explore strange, new prints, to seek out new shapes and new color palettes, to boldly go where no Swede has gone before.” Sofie Elvestedt of the genius trio tells us all about wanting to be an alien, some embellished fish tales and what she’d wish from the wonderful Mr Universe.
SS: What did the three of you do before the times of relentless sketching, painful pinpricks and draping mannequins?
Sofie: Actually my sisters came right out of school because I had started a shop called Minimarket where we had different designers creating unique pieces for the shop so it wasn’t very lucrative, but we started working together and then we realized that we could actually design ourselves together with a fabric constructer and that’s how we started the label but Pernilla and Jennifer started working when they were eighteen and for me I was a copywriter before within retail and marketing. ?
SS: Your sartorial delights are the perfect juxtaposition of minimalism and colourful cartoon-like manifestations, how is it that you all share the same vision? Are you from another planet where siblings share creative talent and their minds are one?
Sofie: We really don’t! I mean all of our pieces are easy to dress up or dress down and that’s because we never really agree with eachother, I mean every item is a product of a long discussion basically, and you can never take out a garment and say ‘oh this is what Pernilla made or Jennifer or Sofie’ so it’s like a combination of the three of us – I’m more dressy, feminine and classic and Jennifer is more streetwear, and Pernilla is more rock and roll and likes draping and styling. As we’re Swedish we have this kind of clean-cut, minimalism but still use a lot more colour and different fabrics than the typical Swedish labels. ?
SS: What is the MINIMARKET philosophy?
Sofie: I think that we all just want to design pieces that are fun and make the wearer feel comfortable, and we’re not pretentious, we like to be fun rather than hard, we want it to be acceptable but still be something very special. ?
SS: What inspired the theme trip, transporting us from deep space to a bizarre underwater world?
Sofie: It was actually Jennifer who started thinking about deep space but then we thought that could be a really pretentious theme! So we had to find something else and we began thinking about the bizarre underwater world that we have and don’t know enough about – we don't know what’s going on down there! So we started running with that and it was quite easy to start working with all the underwater world, I mean all of the pieces derive from different kinds of fishes.
SS: Where would you rather be right now, looking down on Earth from the stars or looking up at the world through the waves?
Sofie: That’s a tricky one! I’m not that adventurous! I don’t know if I would either but I think that I would probably be looking down from the stars as I have been diving quite a lot, but I’ve never been into space. New challenges! ?
SS: Mr. Universe has decided you were so awesome in your human life that you can come back as either an alien or a fish. What would you be?
Sofie: An alien – I would know more! A fish only remembers so little, which can be a relief sometimes of course, but an alien must know a whole lot more. Also, that would enable me to see the earth for the very first time, I often think about that - how I would feel about woods and lakes if I'd never seen them before. I mean, if you've never seen a tree before, that must be bizzare. ?
SS: Tell us something that not a lot of people know about MINIMARKET but you wish more people could know?
Sofie: Also a tricky one! Basically, I would just like more people to know about minimarket because as soon as someone encounters Minimarket they become loyal and love the label. It’s different when you’re new, you just want more people to see it for the first time. We’ve come a long way along the road, but we’re still brand new. ?
SS: Apart from making clothes, shoes and bags, creating your own prints and providing for those of us who can’t afford MINIMARKET with the more inexpensive MINI for MANY line, are there any more notches on your creative belt?
Sofie: I mean we will in the future start making Menswear. Within three seasons we will begin. Most of us thought that we should sell both and we have a lot of requests for the line and lots of emails from guys screaming ‘Why don't you do menswear?!I know you would be great, I miss you already!’ I mean we work with so many fabrics that are actually for mens tailoring, most of our suppliers are Italian and most of them only work with menswear so we already have a lot of suppliers within that range and we could easily apply it and we make so many blazers and things so I think it would not be simple but it’s our kind of feel. ?
SS: Mini for Many is collaborating with idealistic organizations, in this case working to save the sharks with Save the Blue Environmental Foundation. What else would you like to do to help save the planet?
Sofie: We’ve decided on the theme for Minimarket but we haven’t decided on the theme for Mini for Many yet so it will be something connected to the theme. Up until know we have had the same connected idea for the two lines but we will separate Mini for Many even more from Minimarket in the future so it’s going to need it’s own theme, and it can be anything really, but it’s probably going to be something to do with nature – I’m quite fond of animals! You know where the money’s going with these idealistic organizations, you know the money will be used correctly and that’s a problem with a lot of help associations, but here you have direct contact with one of the few people working with them and you know exactly how it’s being used. ?
SS: If SUPERSWEET’s Mr. Universe could grant you one wish, what would it be?
Sofie: All of these wishes are always so tricky for me because I am just so super happy about where we are at the moment but at the same time we’re always persuing new challenges. If I could be granted one wish…it would be nice to have a huge marketing budget! We always have these big plans for shows but you never have the funds. We’re actually taking an investor onboard right now though so I’m hoping we may have our wish fulfilled already! So if that’s the case I would like to buy my country playhouse! Because we’re only renting at the moment and it drives me crazy. It’s my grandpas first home, he grew up there. It’s in the middle of the woods in Sweden by a big lake, which is our own as it belongs to the house and there’s no people, it’s so beautiful. I’m a really natural-born person and Pernilla and Jennifer just are crazy about fishing, they stand down by the lake ALL the time and the last time they got a huge fish on the hook and lost it as they lifted it up so it’s all they can talk about “We’ve gotta get it next time, we’ve gottta get it!”
We do a lot of design work from the house, because the internet doesn’t work, there’s no post and we’re completely alone in silence, no distractions. ?
There’s nothing mini about MINIMARKET.
Words: Sarah Bonser