IMAGES Courtesy of Solitude Studios
Upon first laying eyes on Solitude Studios’ signature seaweed bags, it’s clear that nature serves as the brand’s core inspiration. Like many emerging talents, the brand’s designers – Jonas Sayed Gammal Bruun and Sophia Martinussen – have experimented with sustainable design techniques to create consciously and reduce their environmental impact. But for this Copenhagen-based creative duo, the natural world provides more than just aesthetic inspiration – investigating the dichotomies and nuances of our complex human connections with the environment.
“I think I have always had a complicated relationship with nature,” Jonas explains. “As I’m saying this, Sophia says that I have a complicated relationship with everything,” he laughs. “The thing that comes to mind is getting a ton of plants for my room when I moved away from home to study. I sat there, surrounded by my own little jungle, and found some ambivalence in it.”
Intrigued by the way humans interact with nature and how nature responds, Solitude Studios began crafting its seaweed bags in 2020 amid the COVID pandemic. Aligned with its ethos of land stewardship – the act of caring for land regardless of its ownership – the brand crafts its garments locally using innovative or upcycled textiles enhanced with a neutral palette of all-natural dyes created from things like coffee, rust, and even bog water.
“Our use of the local bog to dye our fabrics [gives] something to nature that was initially taken from it, letting it reclaim this piece of itself that has been borrowed and shaped by humans,” says Jonas.
Since the success of its seaweed fabrication, the brand has expanded to incorporate earthy textures via Y2K retro-futuristic styles, with an emphasis on exposed seams, asymmetrical cuts, and tastefully tattered yarn accents. Its AW24 collection, entitled Hibernating Hopes, which debuted off-schedule ahead of Copenhagen Fashion Week, was inspired by the pair’s ritualistic relationship with material manipulation and pays homage to the spiritual history of Danish peat bogs. In the last two years alone, the label has built a global customer base of like-minded naturalists and is now stocked online at APOC STORE.
Below, Jonas and Sophia share how trial-and-error, privatised nature and giving back to the bog has inspired their brand.
Hi Jonas and Sophia! How would you describe your label in your own words?
Jonas Bruun: Ever changing, hopeful and curious. We try to always look ahead, instead of being rooted in our past. We reference the past, because – naturally – we carry it with us, but try to relate it to a future instead of dwelling.
Sophia Martinussen: I don’t know that I would describe it as an aesthetic, but more as a means to communicate ideas and ideals. We question our curiosities and try to illuminate certain pre-existing things – nature having been the main thing so far. There is this great music all around us that you can only hear when you really take your time, and we feel our most important task is giving others the opportunity to hear it.
What’s one piece you’ve made that you feel summarises your label, and why?
JB: Several pieces come to mind, but really, I think one of the things we did that summarises us is our use of the local bog to dye our fabrics. This process feels like the embodiment of a lot of our thoughts. Giving something to nature that was initially taken from it, letting it reclaim this piece of itself that has been borrowed and shaped by humans – all the while it was never gone, just in an alternate state of material.
I think I have always had a complicated relationship with nature… this privatisation and domestication of nature sparked a very intense curiosity into our general relationship with it.
What first sparked your interest in the relationship between humans and nature?
JB: I think I have always had a complicated relationship with nature (as I’m writing this, Sophia says that I have a complicated relationship with everything). The thing that comes to mind [is] getting a ton of plants [for] my room when I moved away from home to study. I sat there surrounded by my own little jungle and found some ambivalence in it.
Being the generation of privatised nature, it hits home in a unique way. It wasn’t that long ago that forests were in common use (a couple hundred years) and you could go out and chop down a tree and bring wood home from there. Almost everything is privately or state owned now, and anything we set out to do is solely possible because the owner of these very resources allows it to be. Just like me watering my plants, their nutrition is based on my schedule.
This is such a unique global dynamic and shift in power. The more I thought about it, the more questions and feelings arose. This privatisation and domestication of nature sparked a very intense curiosity into our general relationship with it.
SM: Recently, we started looking into the inner workings of humans, such as memory, and how that relates to being nature and ourselves. It serves as a great contrast to the very external view of nature described above. We can reveal that our next collection is going to be called ‘Missing Memories’.
The technique for the seaweed bag isn’t necessarily the intricate part, but seeing the composition, what makes or breaks it, is. To this day, they are still very much made by our own hands.
Can you tell us a bit about the process behind creating your seaweed bags?
JB: The seaweed bag process is a tricky one, mostly because [it’s] time-consuming. But also, we realised that it is such a piece of instinctual composition and is very difficult to teach. The technique isn’t necessarily the intricate part, but seeing the composition is, what makes or breaks it. To this day, they are still very much made by our own hands.
What barriers or challenges, if any, have you experienced in accessing the industry?
JB: I want to say all of them! We started just before COVID hit, having our entry into retail very much halted, but also shaping the foundation of the independence we have today, as we were limited to our own channels. If there are no more crises and the world sees a sustained economic upswing, I think it’s [going to] feel weird, as we have always sailed against the financial current.
Accessibility has also been a huge challenge, as our work has always been quite intricate to produce. We are really now focusing on getting our pieces out in the world, on people – where they belong.
We do think that all these barriers and challenges are a big part of the fun of it. It’s all those things you look back at and remember how you broke through them and the fires you put out along the way. We truly enjoy these challenges and try to keep challenging ourselves. Last time we did our entire collection and show planning just the two of us, so let’s see what the next challenge will be.
We would love to see some more devotion to concept. Everything is quite streamlined these days and too efficient. We have talked a lot about really letting our concepts bleed into every aspect of our brand and lives and devoting ourselves completely to the ideas.
What changes would you like to see, if any, in the fashion industry right now, and how is your brand contributing to this?
JB: We would love to see some more devotion to concept. Everything is quite streamlined these days and too efficient. We have talked a lot about really letting our concepts bleed into every aspect of our brand and lives and devoting ourselves completely to the ideas.
What’s the best and worst advice you’ve ever been given about fashion or design?
JB: When we first started out, we shared a studio space with a bunch of people. One of them – Bettina, who is now a great friend – once said that “you should only make garments if you can’t stop doing it”. I’m not sure she remembers even saying it, but four years later, this advice has stuck with us the clearest.
Worst advice is an interesting one – we think everything can be used for something – but the worst thing we have done is listen to too many opinions instead of our own inner voice. It’s a cliché, but difficult to practise. You can definitely use bad advice too. We have often aired something for people who we know we disagree with, and if they don’t like it, we’re on the right track.
What are you blasting on repeat while you’re working in your studio?
JB: You can always count on us playing a lot of danish rap – most notably Carmon and Jamaika, and a tonne of Lana Del Rey.
What’s your weirdest or wildest fashion obsession right now?
JB: Right now, we are looking anywhere but fashion. We are practising allowing ourselves to alter our perception of the world. When we see a building and it looks like an insect, or a cloud that resembles feathers, then we take it a step further and accept it as being the multitude we are experiencing. To accept the notion that things can be equally real in multiple planes of existence simultaneously.
What fictional character would LOVE your label?
JB: We would love it if the stalker from Stalker (the Tarkovskijs film) would love our label.
It’s definitely a love language for us to give clothing to the people around us and a huge source of inspiration. There’s a symbiotic relationship between their personalities and our designs.
And who IRL would you love to dress in bog-core?
JB: My mom. I am designing a piece for her in my head these days. It is supposed to be a secret, and she will probably read this, so I can’t go into too much detail, but it will be a wardrobe staple for her daily walks with her dog. She has always loved turquoise, and I recently shared her fascination… that’s all you get.
SM: All of our friends… I want to dress everybody I hold dear. In general, it’s definitely a love language for us to give clothing to the people around us and a huge source of inspiration. There’s a symbiotic relationship between their personalities and our designs. We have said it a bunch of times in the past, but the way garments live and breathe with a person is so specific to dress. How a person embodies the initial idea of a piece and alters the story merely with their way of life is the biggest inspiration of all. Such archival of time and character might be one of our favourite natural occurrences.
What are your plans for the future?
JB: To keep practising, honing our craft, and having fun telling stories. We both are well-aware that we are not at all at the peak of our skills yet. Having run a brand these past years has resulted in such little time for actually making the garments and practising – developing ourselves is our biggest goal.
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