It began with a stripe
I had a pair of training tights with a thick, straight stripe across the back. One day I stood in front of the mirror, took hold of the stripe and pulled it inwards, towards the middle.
Suddenly the whole shape changed.
I remember saying it out loud: Why do they not do it like this? And why does the line not sit higher up on the leg?
It was such a simple thing. But once I had seen it, I could not let it go.
At the time, a lot of activewear looked the same. Large logos, strong colours and details that seemed to be placed without much thought for what they actually did to the body. The function was there. But I missed the shape.
I wanted to create training clothes with the same thinking behind lines, proportions and fit as in a tailored garment, but in materials that could move, sweat and be trained in.
That was the beginning of Wallderinska.
Two different strengths
I did not start alone.
My husband John and I met in 2012, and he is co-founder of Wallderinska. He had been building companies since 2005 and had the experience of business that I lacked.
He knows companies. I know garments.
Where I saw how a line could change a body, he saw how an idea could become a company.
That combination turned out to matter more than we probably understood at the time.
Our customers gave us the name
Wallderin is my surname, and in the beginning the brand was called Wallderin Clothing.
But our customers started calling us something else.
Wallderinska.
It stayed. In the end it felt more obvious than the name we had chosen ourselves, so we listened to them.
The W in our mark comes from my name. Over the years it has come to stand for much more than that. The people who have been beside me, all the years of work behind the brand and perhaps above all the will to keep going when the easier road would have been to give up.
The gold, the lines and the shape
Black and gold became our signature early on.
A gold zip. A detail in the waistband. A line that follows the body instead of cutting across it.
To me a detail is never just decoration. It has to do something to the garment.
The stripe that once sat wrong became, in time, part of our own language of form through our piping, a folded band of fabric shaped into an even line that runs almost like a fine cord along the garment.
It may sound simple. It is not.
Getting it completely even on a soft stretch material turned out to be so difficult that we went through thirteen factories in Europe and Asia before we found a production that could make it the way I wanted it. A lot of sample material ended up in the bin along the way.
There are easier ways to do it.
But it would not be the same garment.
That sentence has followed Wallderinska for a long time. For me it sums up much of why shape has always mattered. Clothes should not make a woman feel that her body needs correcting. They should help her feel strong in the body she already has.
Made to stay
I have never been very interested in creating something only because it happens to be current right now.
I want a garment to feel right when you take it out five years from now too.
So we do not work to a traditional fashion cycle where everything has to be replaced by a new season. Some styles stay for a long time. Others disappear and may never come back. A few return several years later.
What matters to me is not how often we launch something new.
What matters is that what we launch deserves to exist.
The quality should show after many washes. The fit should still be there after many sessions. And when you put the garment on, you should still understand why every line sits where it sits.
Still close
Behind every garment there are people who sew, test and work with the details.
And behind Wallderinska there is still me.
Over the years I have packed orders, stood in the warehouse, answered customer emails, worked with production, built parts of our sites and learned things I did not even know I needed to know when we began.
If you wonder about a size, a material or sometimes a delivery, it may still be me who answers. Sometimes on the phone as well.
That closeness is something I never want to build away.
To me it is as much Wallderinska as the gold and the fit.
On my terms
Wallderinska has grown organically since 2013.
Not fast for the sake of speed, but step by step.
When I started I knew very little about everything it takes to build a brand. Today I know considerably more, not least because I have made many of the mistakes myself.
I have chosen to build Wallderinska my way. At times it has been the slower road, but it has also given me the freedom to say no when something does not feel right.
That is what I want to keep.
Still small. Still Swedish.
Today Wallderinska is worn by women in Sweden, across Europe and in the United States.
But at heart we are still a small Swedish brand from Stockholm.
And I still work with the same care for detail as when I stood in front of the mirror in 2012 and moved that stripe a few centimetres with my fingers.
That is really where all of it is.
Seeing something that is almost right, and not being able to leave it alone.