Vogue Scandinavia introduces us to Worn Vintage, “Hailey Bieber’s favourite Swedish second-hand store.” Founded by Lovisa Källström, Worn Vintage is [or was] a one-woman vintage shop in Stockholm, opened in response to the climate crisis.

This week, Worn Vintage is again in the Scandinavian limelight, as Lovisa Källström launches its own collection of upcycled leather jackets.

“It made me think about our overconsumption, especially within the fashion business,” the shopkeeper gone designer told Josefin Forsberg in May 2022 about opening her globally-known shop. “Worn was a natural step for me to inspire others and offer a brand where access to pre-loved clothing is made easy.”

A single jacket in the new upcycled and recycled leather collection was released before the Christmas. It was quickly “picked up” by the shop’s biggest fan and supporter Hailey Bieber, who regularly features her in-shop buying visits on IG.

The December drop jacket was soon on the back of supermodel Gigi Hadid.

Lovisa Källström expressed gratitude to both Bieber and Hadid in her new interview and then added another major fan of Worn Vintage, Scandi queen Elsa Hosk, to her grateful basket.

“It honestly still feels a bit unreal,” says Källström. “I have been dreaming about seeing these people in our pieces, so to see all of them wearing Worn just within a year is amazing and I feel very honoured.”

**Lovisa Källström’s Worn Vintage** [Stockholm] Upcycled Leather Jackets Photo: Olaf Ringmar

As Källström expands her Worn Vintage brand, her focus remains true to core sustainability principles.

“We work with a small family run company that works with recycled leather,” explains Källström to Scandi Vogue. “They source and buy the recycled leather and every jacket is handmade in their factory.” It’s an organic partnership, with the two small businesses expanding hand-in-hand. “It has grown into a great collaboration over this past year and we talk daily about the production and upcoming designs,” Källström says with pride.

Hosk, Bieber and Hadid: Sustainability in Their Own Brands

One of the most exciting changes in fashion industry business models — an evolution deeply connected to social media — is the rise of celebrity and model-owned brands.

AOC will always support models and talents promoting their own businesses solo or in conjunction with known industry players if they do not conflict with our own values.

We do not write press releases like obedient fashion robots, if we are concerned that a brand’s values do not align with AOC’s.

Since April AOC has written about sustainability principles at work [or not] in Elsa Hosk’s new fashion brand Helsa and Guest in Residence, Gigi Hadid’s cashmere brand.

We haven’t discussed Hailey Bieber’s Rhode beauty brand — the third new business launched by a very public supporter of Worn Vintage.

The Halo Effect

When a celeb or top model makes frequent media splashes wearing recycled fashion or sustainable brands, a ‘portfolio of assumptions’ is created about the integrity of that own person’s brand, if and when she launches it. It’s just another extension of what is called the “halo” effect.

Worn Vintage is deeply appreciative of what Bieber, Hadid and Hosk have done for her business — confirming the fact the we consumers are influenced by these choices made by fab trio. We are grateful for them, too, as fashion road radar not only on style but also sustainability.

Hailey Bieber wears a lot of sustainable fashion — whether vintage, upcycled or new, but sustainably made. Therefore, when Bieber launched Rhode, AOC assumed that sustainability would be a core principle of the brand.

We had similar expectations of Elsa Hosk [well on her way to meeting AOC’s standards] and Gigi Hadid [totally ignoring all words of wisdom being written about today’s cashmere business.]

We assumed sustainable packaging from all three talents — because there is NO EXCUSE for not having sustainable packaging today in a new business.

In summary, consumers — and fashion writers — form expectations around a model’s upcoming brand and business, based on their own choices.

We assume the story they are narrating about their own lives and values will be translated into their businesses.

When AOC first covered Elsa Hosk’s upcoming Helsa launch from her Instagram, I wrote: “The Scandi beauty has always stressed the importance of sustainability and it would be shocking if she doesn’t create sustainable products.”

Until today, I have not written about Rhode, but a month ago I finally saw the website.

I will say this much about Hailey Bieber’s Rhode brand: She blew me out of the goddess-damn water with this first phase of Rhode.

Fair and Balanced

What Vogue Scandinavia taught me in a New York minute is that the easiest way to approach this difficult assignment of being disppointed in brands from people you respect, is by comparing brands launched by their peers.

How do you stand up against your friends? If “sustainability” is written all over one model’s website and nowhere on another’s, am I being too tough noting the disparity?

Or am I exhibiting some journalistic integrity, by expressing my disappointments and shattered expectations with people who march for environmental action and then don’t mention the word once on their website.

How does that happen? Hailey Bieber is not selling a word salad. To her credit, Bieber has highly-credentialed, professional partners who understand science and execution.

Hailey has pulled it all together in one of the most professionally executed, science-based, sustainable everything and everywhere on the website brand launches I’ve seen. Wow. Wow. Wow.

A Cashmere Sustainability Update

I don’t know anyone in fashion but AOC who has had the guts to criticize Guest in Residence cashmere. I note tonight that in the last month, a statement about cashmere ethics has been added to the website and it directly addresses my key points.

Tonight is not the moment for evaluation of the Guest in Residence statements, but I am pleased to see Gigi Hadid understand that this issue is for real. A charm offensive will not take cashmere’s effects on planet earth off people’s radar.

I will digest this new information, but criticism from me is far better than several other websites that come to mind. For people reading about this issue for the first time, I reached out to Guest in Residence last September with my concerns. They ignored me.

AOC is read by creatives in the fashion industry, and we understand how complicated these issues are. You don’t yield to them, but we do understand sourcing and manufacturing.

If the Pxxx-activist organization comes after Hadid, she has real trouble on her backside, so better me than them.

The P-people are hot on cashmere, literally getting claims removed from a major cashmere website in hours recently. It was stunning to watch.

Reformation Will Completely Eliminate New Cashmere

It was only Thursday that I learned that Karlie Kloss is a major investor in Reformation, now back on track after a rough 2020 with major staff issues and the resignation of founder Yael Afalo on charges of racism.

Reformation has spent the last few years working to replace cashmere with a recycled version instead. Their own admission is that the process must be speeded up, that the environmental goals will not be met by fashion world, if suppliers don’t up their games.

Reformation says that by 2025, all of its materials will be recycled, renewable, or “regenerative” and that includes cashmere. The goal is to banish virgin cashmere from the brand in a few years.

Reformation is joined by Gabriela Hearst at Chloe and Stella McCartney — to name two other players — who know that if they keep demanding perfection in the textile lab process, they are close to a win with recycled cashmere. From AOC’s perspective, there is a lot of information-sharing on how to solve the cashmere crisis, driven by happy-faces increased demand.

AOC will drill down on cashmere again and again, because after watching the entire fashion industry give our beloved Gigi Hadid a cashmere cakewalk — and she IS beloved by ME — I refuse to wire my mouth shut. It was both stunning and also sickening to watch.

Clearly someone at GR is reading AOC, and that is good news. I no longer have a pit in my stomach over my audacity.

As for Hailey Bieber, this Rhode concept is a masterpiece from what I can see. Vogue Business just covered what has been a very productive Rhode launch. We have a subscription and will pull out the key points.

Elsa Hosk is off to a good start with Helsa, and we have total confidence that her vision — the embodiment of Scandi commitment to the environment — will become more sustainable with each month. In cotton, she’s way more sustainable than Victoria’s Secret out of the gate.

Love to all. ~ Anne