Inside & Other Stories’s Stockholm studio, one of the label’s three creative hubs

By

Dominique Muret

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Aug 30, 2018

Womenswear label & Other Stories was launched by H&M in 2013, and has grown by leaps and bounds since then. On Friday August 31, & Other Stories is inaugurating its third Parisian store, in rue Vieille-du-Temple, located at remarkable 880-sqaure-metre premises in the hip Marais district. “There is a lot of excitement around this opening,” said Charlotta, who joined the label a few months ago, as she welcomed us at & Other Stories’s headquarters in Kungsholmen, a residential neighbourhood in Sweden’s capital Stockholm.

 
This is where & Other Stories has set up its offices and its main design studio, one of three alongside the ‘Atelier’ in Paris and the one established in Los Angeles in 2017. More than 120 people, from designers to directors, architects, sales managers and merchandising and marketing specialists work in this unassuming three-storey building in the heart of Stockholm.
 
In a corner, the new Autumn/Winter collection, its various models bearing three different garment labels: ‘Stockholm Atelier’, ‘Paris Atelier’ and ‘Los Angeles Atelier’, reflecting the label’s three moods: minimalist, feminine and cool.

A little farther away, in the most pared-down space you could imagine, between two white screens, is where & Other Stories shoots all the clothes and accessories pictures used for the label's e-tail site. The interiors of the label’s monobrand stores are also designed here in the Stockholm studio.

 
It is late on an August afternoon, and the open-plan offices nestled under the eaves, with their basic furnishings, are sparsely populated and appear very quiet. Yet at other times they are a hive of activity, the place where & Other Stories, which in the last two years has doubled the number of stores it operates, builds its success. With its designer feel and accessible prices, the label has spun a clever visual tale, broadening its range and appealing to a wide audience, from younger to more mature women.
 
& Other Stories celebrated its fifth anniversary in January 2018, and now operates 62 monobrand stores in 17 countries. After the latest Parisian opening, the label is about to open its very first store in Austria, in Vienna. Three more openings in the UK, two in Denmark and one in South Korea are also on the cards in the near future. The USA, the UK and Europe are currently the leading markets for & Other Stories.
 

Last week, & Other Stories launched its first haircare collection, created in the Los Angeles studio, less than a year after introducing a French-made natural make-up line.

The label is very active on the collaboration front too, producing a spate of exclusive capsule collections. For the autumn 2018, after teaming up with the Toms and Rodarte labels, with singer Lykke Li and US singer/songwriter Kim Gordon, & Other Stories is joining forces with the Deep End Club, a collective of artists and activists founded by British musician and actress Tennessee Thomas.