Three, two, one…action! Consider horny girl summer launched with the release of a spicy collaboration between Tiger of Sweden and Nuda, an independent magazine founded in Stockholm. Titled Curious Monika, the capsule weaves together two main themes: “Swedish sin” (i.e. the supposed promiscuity of Swedish women as depicted in films from the 50’s through the ’70s), and the country’s progg movement, (short for progressivism) which was aligned with a leftist, ani-commerical agenda. Style-wise, the look was bohi mixed with elements of traidtional dress; unlike prog music outsid eof Sweden, the progg movement encompassed many types of genres.
Since joining the 120-year-old brand in 2019, Bryan Conway, who is a Burberry alum, has been exploring different aspects of Sweden’s history via his outsider’s lens. Nuda’s co-founders Frida Vega Salomonsson and Nora Arrhenius Hagdahl are locals who play with heritage in a way Conway cannot. The two friends, whose current office was once used to shoot blue movies, have a sense of humor and embrace provocation, both of which are in evidence in this project.
In the face of growing nationalism, they have taken up the subject of national dress and perverted it in a most desirable, and mostly SFW, way. “We knew that we wanted to make something with Swedish heritage, but in a fun way,” notes Hagdahl. One thing you won’t want to do at work is to cue up 1978’s Fäbodjäntan (Come Blow the Horn!), a Swedish porn flick that takes place in the countryside which is one of the team’s main references.
The sound of the aforementioned enchanted horn is supposed to act as an aphrodisiac. It “is this super, super funny campy porno…a cult classic that really plays to the magic around midsummer,” explains Hagdahl. “It’s these girls walking around in a field and very much in the vibe of 1970s progg movement… People felt good and it was [a time of] sexual liberation.” Expounding on Sweden’s progg movement and green wave, Salomonsson says: “People were forming different collectives, moving up to the countryside, having some kind of free love. But then also there was a big uprising with folk music…and they used these traditional costumes, but they remixed them.” Adds Hagdahl: “I think for us coming into Tiger Sweden and trying to make a collection that resonated with our culture, [the approach was to] do that in a fun and not a national romanticist way. I think Fäbodjäntan really embodies this sexiness, a totally loco, quirky way of looking at old heritage and cherry picking. It’s this very idyllic idea of what the past was about.”
