Oops!…she did it again—or something like that. Avavav’s Beate Karlsson charmed and challenged the fashion establishment afresh with an offbeat show format—but let’s be clear, there was no oops factor involved. In fact, the odds of this small, women-led company based in Stockholm making waves in one of the big four cities are close to none. And so the designer (who trained in New York and worked for Pyer Moss before returning to Europe) has turned her point of difference, namely her digital fluency, into a defining aspect of her brand.
Avavav is not the only millennial or Gen Alpha brand speaking directly to its peer audience (see Vain, for example), but Karlsson is unique in her use of fashion as a two-way mirror. Her designs are casual: mostly jeans, statement T-shirts, and streetwear—with a difference. Her shoulderless hoodies, worn Conehead style, have been very influential, as have her finger shoes, in which Rick Owens has been photographed out and about. Denim comes in interesting washes, and an elephant-leg effect is created by tucking the flared bottoms of the pants.
Karlsson, like many designers this season, turned her attention to sports. Her motivation was a collaboration with Adidas. “It’s been a dream of mine to collaborate with them, specifically,” she said on a call. She “dedicated the show to the partnership because it is a big deal for us and a lot of the looks are going to be showing the product that we’ve made with them.” This is a big deal, because not only is Avavav a relatively small business, but because still, in 2024, there are so few women invited into the streetwear space. And, as the designer noted, “There are a lot of interesting things that can come from bringing feminine attributes into streetwear.” She proved that today.
To frame the collaboration, Karlsson held her show in a sports arena. The concept was that the models would “compete” to beat the world record in the 100 meters. The tagline: “High fashion and low performance.” For Avavav fans, the models’ stumbling will feel like a reference to the viral spring 2023 show at which every model fell (on purpose). Although only a section of the track was used, the choice of event and the full oval could easily be read as a metaphor for the fashion industry as a whole and the circularity, inwardness, and repetition of its set cycles. Karlsson does find some irony in fashion’s pursuit of athleticism, but she was coming from a more benign mindset. “There’s a lot of curiosity and seriousness and rules within the fashion industry, and there’s a lot of seriousness and rules within sports as well, so it’s been fun to try to mix them,” she said.
Her desire to keep things light was understandable, as fall’s show was an unsettling social experiment. The thesis, Karlsson said then, was “to put online haters into a physical space and see if they would [when prompted] interact and start throwing things; kind of stoning-the-witch actions.” How this played out was that plastic gloves and buckets of (not dirty) garbage were put out, and people planted in the audience threw some at the prebriefed models. Without further prompting, many in the audience followed suit. Stripped of context, these images blew up the internet.
And so, on the surface, spring’s show had the appearance of being tamer, although models were wrapped (some almost mummified) in crepe bandages, a few with bloodstains. Karlsson created a full collection but focused on the Adidas collaboration. She took the classic Adicolor tracksuit and cropped the jacket: This was worn as a set, or, in one case, the top was paired with an of-the-moment sheer skirt with a handkerchief hem. There was suiting with stripes and caps with the three stripes made of shoelaces that extended over the brim like bangs. Also flapping in the wind was a dress-length zip-up with a car-wash hem. That wasn’t all; there were half- and full-body-painted track jackets. The emperor’s new clothes? Mixed in among the sporty looks were tanks with button-front jackets with pinked-cut collars that looked like something had taken a bite out of them, a pieced slip dress, a polo shirt, and slashed hoodies that had a skeletal effect but actually related back to Pingu and fish bones.
As covetable as the garments were, the accessories were even more so. Avavav’s Larva bag, which iterates on the brand’s distinctive finger shape, was reimagined so that each digit looked like a mini Adidas Superstar shoe. The smilelike curve of that bag was turned upside down for a simpler bowling-style top-handle one. There were boxing glove–mitten hybrids and a number of shoe variants. The most righteous of these were the shell-toe Superstars with finger extensions, which, noted Karlsson, are “so not sporty.” Sensational. “We’re always trying to do something that is evolution…that’s my philosophy,” she said.
No sports records were broken today, but Karlsson, who never stands still, clearly came out in front. As is her way, this show was about a lot more than Avavav. The word from Adidas, the designer said, was “do whatever you want, but don’t fuck with the stripes.” This editor couldn’t help seeing a connection between the track lanes and a typical runway. The up-and-down runway is a format so seeming inviolable that it makes news whenever someone goes outside of the lines. Karlsson’s fearlessness regarding the status quo is not only refreshing, it is necessary.
