What´s your fashion Story?

Ebba:

As a teenager in the ’90s, my denim story naturally began with a Levi’s 501. My mother was always good at finding the right things in the right places, and for my first pair, she found a workwear store. For quite some time, it was the only pair I wore.

I still remember discovering “Shrink-to-Fit” jeans in the Manufactum catalogue. I was fascinated by the idea of a garment gradually taking on its own shape through wear. And I fell in love with that deep, dark blue. My dream was to wear them with a beautiful pair of leather boots — a combination that has since become almost iconic within the denim community.

At fifteen, my next denim obsession arrived: blue-and-white striped OshKosh dungarees. I had seen them at my aunt’s house in Sweden and immediately knew I wanted a pair.

We searched several shops, but never found them. Then, back home in Munich, I happened to walk past a store in the city centre — and there they were. They had exactly the cut I was looking for: loose, relaxed and perfectly baggy.

I wore them almost exclusively with the same white ribbed T-shirt. My wardrobe was remarkably small back then: dungarees, a tartan skirt, one T-shirt and my Dr. Martens Mary Janes. And somehow, that was enough.

At some point, though, a familiar question emerged:  “I have this very specific idea in my head — so why can’t I find it anywhere in a shop?”

Luckily, there was a sewing machine at home. My mother had sewn many of our clothes when we were children, so eventually I started making my own. Sometimes I followed patterns; more often, I simply had an idea and figured out how to make it work.

During my studies in fashion and graphic design, this experimentation developed into a real fascination with construction and design. I discovered my passion for pattern cutting, while graphic design opened up another world of proportions, images and typography.

Looking back, that small, pared-down wardrobe was probably the beginning of something I couldn’t yet put into words. I didn’t just want to wear clothes. I wanted to understand them, change them and make them myself.

The idea of starting my own label was already there — even though I didn’t know it yet.

Geppetto: When I was a three-year-old boy, my father seamed a little strange to me. He always removed the labels and stitching from the back pockets of his jeans and said: “Look, these are the best pants in the world.” He only wore Levi’s 501 Shrink-to-Fit jeans and would wear them raw and unwashed for two weeks before washing them. “The perfect shape and beauty come through these repetitive processes of wearing and washing,” he told me.

That was when I began to understand that denim was alive — and that there was something very special about it.

Years later, as a teenager in the ’90s, the hype around the 501 exploded. Suddenly, I understood what my father had always known. I was also thrilled when I finally fit into his old, worn-in pair and could wear them in a baggy style.

When I eventually got my own new Shrink-to-Fit pair, it felt like a hard, dark-blue steel sheet at first. But over time, it developed its own character. I was hooked. And this is where my aversion to artificial finishes and post-treatment comes from. Why make new jeans look used and then sell that as innovation? It feels like a fundamental misconception. I love making something new from used materials and repairing things. But nobody would buy a rusty, dented car for more money simply because it had been made to look used, right?

When I was around twenty, engineered jean cuts appeared. I immediately bought a pair — partly because I wanted something different from my dad’s jeans 😉. I was also looking for my own favourite pair, the one I could love for the rest of my life.

Then, just before a two-month surf trip, my jeans got soaked in the rain. In the rush of packing, I threw them into a bucket. When I returned, they were moldy and musty.

I treated them with mold remover, and the stains surprisingly turned into irregular, blotchy white patterns. My friends were fascinated and assumed I was wearing some kind of expensive designer jeans. 😀

Again, the years passed.

Then, in 2003, our story began in Morocco. Ebba and I couldn’t let go of one question: “What would the ultimate pair of trousers look like?” Almost all trousers, regardless of material, are based on the same basic construction: side seams. We started wondering whether there was a more contemporary way to construct trousers — one that could challenge the conventional way of shaping the legs.

Our adventurous denim story began — and to this day, we still struggle to communicate our idea…

After three years of prototyping, we founded our label and geppebba was ready for mass production in 2006. We soon realized how difficult it was to move forward in the market. The idea of “form follows function” resonated with a small circle of people who appreciated the product itself, but somehow it didn’t translate into the fashion market.

A fashion mind simply works differently from an engineer’s. Today, we love sewing our pants on old pedal-powered machines. For us, living the spirit is the real luxury we have found in denim.