Siv Støldal

Siv Støldal is a Norwegian menswear designer. She trained as a tailor and in 1999 moved to London to complete an MA in Menswear at Central Saint Martins. She has shown her collections in London and Paris and has collaborated with the likes of Fred Perry and Topman. In 2006 the British Fashion Council nominated Støldal as Menswear Designer of the Year. Her idiosyncratic approach to design has incorporated numerous unusual research techniques and displays, such as the placing of a series of scarecrows in Norwegian fields or wrapping up buildings in London. Siv Støldal currently lives and works in Norway.
http://showstudio.com/contributor/siv_stoldal

AW 2006-07 / Seasonal/Effective/Disorder

Working in London, Siv Støldal is widely exposed to both landscapes of the city of London where she works and resides and her native home of Norway. As both countries experience an extreme cold climate, Siv reinforces her menswear as having a slight ruggedness and the use of traditional knitwear. Her pieces cover a range of vest coat jackets and bomber jackets that have a unique tactile feel and appearance with an asymmetrical use of patterning for jersey knits and oversized trench coats. Evidently, her contemporary menswear is uniquely informed by landscape but also her focal skills in conceptualising a collection that is extremely wearable that offers a delicate touch to well crafted garments and the use of plaid.
http://www.culturesinbetween.net/siv-stoldal/

SS 2005 / Outside/In

Siv Støldal has built up a well-known and respected international menswear fashion label, and has been working in the high level fashion market since she graduated from St Martins, London in 1999.
Siv Støldal has shown her collections regularly at London and Paris fashion weeks and her work is presented in various fashion books. She has made several short films, two commissioned by Nick Knight’s Showstudio, and collaborated with companies like Fred Perry, Top man and Kickers. Siv Støldal has won several design awards and has been nominated for Best Menswear Designer by The London Fashion Institute.
http://www.haikwithus.com/?page_id=152

AW 2003-04 / Trace

DD: Your collections indicate clear traces from your native country, Norway. Why do you always find Norway such a source of inspiration?
SS: My work always has an inquisitive starting point, where I often interview people around me about their clothes. I think it has been purely practical that my research groups have been situated mostly in Norway and UK until now. However since the interactive Cover Up project, I have established contact with people all over the world and see this as a very valuable addition for future projects. At the moment I am working on a research project documenting Norwegian men's wardrobes, I was interested in regular guys completely outside of the fashion conscious crowd, (you know, pretty much all my friends!) and document a more pure relationship with a man and his clothes. 'Being interested in clothes' had in a way been hijacked by the fashion industry and automatically means he is interested in fashion. I wanted to investigate if a man can be passionate of clothes outside the influence of fashion brands, and therefore concentrated my research group to the Norwegian country side. You can see a short film I made about this research with the photographer Lewis Ronald at ShowStudio. I also did a film as part of their Political Fashion Films earlier this summer.

DD: Most of your shows combine fashion presented in an art form, like a room totally larded with creativity. How closely related are art and fashion actually?
SS: Fashion, art... it is all about presentation of a concept and idea. Sometimes the tools used for communicating work within fashion and art get mixed and the boundaries get a little blurred.
http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/1406/1/siv-stoldal-off-the-rack-and-ready-to-wear


http://www.sivstoldal.com/