MINNA PALMQVIST X HUMANA
MINNA PALMQVIST X HUMANA
HUMANA Second Hand proudly presents its latest collaboration with designer Minna Palmqvist. The limited collection consists of the pants/skirt hybrid "jeans for free legs" in denim and a printed T-shirt in gray and white. The products are made from materials sourced from HUMANA Second Hand and designed by Minna Palmqvist.
The limited collection will be released exclusively at HUMANA Second Hand's Mariatorget store on Timmermansgatan 23 in Stockholm. To celebrate this, HUMANA and Minna invite you to a launch party with drinks and DJ sets on June 13th between 7:00 PM and 9:00 PM. RSVP HERE.
In anticipation of the collection launch, we had a brief chat with Minna.
HUMANA Second Hand: Describe Minna Palmqvist’s brand in one sentence
Minna Palmqvist: On the verge to breakdown.
HSH: What is the biggest driving force behind your work?
MP: Transforming the energy from my frustration with fabricated norms and societal systems into garments and objects where I, and hopefully others, can feel a sense of hope that something else must be possible.
HSH: What is important for you to convey as a clothing designer and fashion creator?
MP: It sounds so pompous, but to convey that the entire societal system, including all norms, is fabricated and that we can do better than this.
HSH: Why do you want to collaborate with HUMANA Second Hand?
MP: My absolute goal is to work circularly without exploiting other people in the production process - just like HUMANA. That’s why it felt like a perfect match for me. I think it’s important to join forces across different fields and ways of working to increase interest in alternatives to newly produced garments.
HSH: Tell us more about the collection you are creating with HUMANA.
MP: The jeans came about by chance earlier this spring during a photoshoot for my webshop. I mostly make tops, and the models either have to wear the same skirt over and over to complete a look, or go with the Donald Duck look without a bottom piece. I’ve wanted to make jeans in some form for a long time, and here I took a pair, cut them up, and pinned them on the models. I cut completely without thinking, and there they were: the jeans I’ve always wanted to make! A mix of dressed and undressed, a hybrid between a skirt and pants, allowing the body to take its place. I was working with HUMANA on a stage project at the same time and saw the heaps of jeans they had. This sparked the idea of collaboration, HUMANA jumped at it immediately, and here they are now – the summer jeans of all our dreams! The jeans have been carefully selected and cut in my studio, then sewn at Textilmaskineriet in Bromma. Local and small, just the way I like it. Then the T-shirt came as a complement to create a good jeans look. My motivation was to quickly and easily translate my otherwise artisanal way of crinkling fabrics and applying them to garments in my project “Under Pressure” into a monochrome screen print. I am very satisfied with the result. The T-shirts are printed at Vägen ut, a social enterprise in Gothenburg.
HSH: Let’s travel 10 years into the future – how do you think we will consume clothes?
MP: I am unfortunately quite cynical, but let me dream: we shop second-hand for everyday wear and occasionally buy well-made and ethically produced garments when the budget allows. More thoughtfulness, simply. And hopefully also less uniformity.
HSH: Which fashion trend do you prefer to follow this summer?
MP: I am so insanely out of touch with trends! I hope the jeans we made become a trend because I will be living in them night and day!
ABOUT MINNA PALMQVIST
Minna Palmqvist is a fashion designer and textile artist based in Stockholm. Since her graduation in Fashion Arts and Textile from Konstfack, she has focused on representations of the female body, exploring the clashes between society’s accepted body ideals and the real physical bodies women inhabit.
Palmqvist’s work moves fluidly between fashion and art, where her garments, objects, and installations blend these fields in a way that refuses to be defined as one or the other. Her works challenge stereotypical norms, the objectification of women, and current methods of clothing production and consumption.
Palmqvist uses her art to explore alternative ways to operate within an industry she critiques, while expressing a deep love for fashion as a means of identity expression and for people to claim their place in a system not designed for them.
Minna Palmqvist has exhibited her works in prominent museums and alongside established fashion icons such as Hussein Chalayan, Maison Martin Margiela, and Rei Kawakubo.
Photo of Minna Palmqvist by Kegen Lorenzson
