“by Signe” — Cleane Mode von innen und außen

“by Signe” ist ein faires Mod­e­la­bel aus Däne­mark, das ich erst­mals auf der Eth­i­cal Fash­ion Show in Berlin ken­nen­gel­ernt hat­te. Nicht nur die Kollek­tio­nen sind zum Ver­lieben, son­dern auch deren Designer­in und Grün­derin Signe Rod­bro ist beza­ubernd. Signe inter­essierte sich schon als Kind für Mode und begann nach der Schule ein Design­studi­um in Däne­mark und Spanien. Ihre fairen Stücke sehen von außen so gar nicht nach “öko” aus, son­dern sind stylisch, über­saison­al, min­i­mal­is­tisch und clean. Typ­isch nordisch beschränken sich die Far­ben der Kollek­tio­nen auf Schwarz, Weiß und Beige. Beson­ders bemerkenswert ist, dass Signe die absolute Kon­trolle über die Pro­duk­tions­kette hat, da die gesamte Kollek­tion — vom ersten Design­strich bis zum let­zten Stich — in ihrem Stu­dio in Fred­erik­shavn gefer­tigt wird. Außer­dem sind möglichst alle Mate­ri­alien bio und GOTS-zer­ti­fiziert und Signe ver­sucht, so wenig Ver­schnitt wie möglich zu produzieren.

Foto: Bess­er Nord als nie!

What does “by Signe” stand for?
By Signe is a Dan­ish sus­tain­able fash­ion brand with a com­plete­ly trans­par­ent design-process. The brand stands for cre­at­ing hon­est and min­i­mal­ist easy­wear from organ­ic mate­ri­als and an eth­i­cal pro­duc­tion in our own cre­ative space in Den­mark. As a design­er I am high­ly focused on com­fort and want­i­ng to keep the val­ues of the nat­ur­al woman with­in a mod­ern cul­ture. You can expect clean cuts from our Scan­di­na­vian aes­thet­ics accom­pa­nied by a soft col­or palette high­light­ing the min­i­mal­ism and sub­ver­sive ele­gance behind the visu­als of the brand.

How do you define “Eth­i­cal Fashion”?
Eth­i­cal fash­ion to me is a whole com­plete cir­cle of cov­er­ing every­thing tak­ing care of both our envi­ron­ment but also the social aspects of gar­ment man­u­fac­tur­ing. I real­ly do believe that the future of fash­ion is sus­tain­able, and I decid­ed to cov­er every­thing from the begin­ning with a wish of re-think­ing the whole process. We cov­er all details sus­tain­ably from fibers to care labels and pro­duc­tion meth­ods, to improve our foot­print on the plan­et and to keep the wear­er of our gar­ments free from any tox­ic mate­ri­als or chemicals.

Foto: Bess­er Nord als nie!

Tell us about your background.
My inter­est in fash­ion start­ed ear­ly, as a child I remem­ber copy­ing the same mod­el over and over again, draw­ing new cloth­ing and pat­terns on her every time. After fin­ish­ing high school I went to a small pri­vate tai­lor­ing school in Den­mark. This was when I realised that fash­ion was my path to fol­low. How­ev­er, this school was very old-fash­ioned and there was not much room for any imag­i­na­tion or cre­ativ­i­ty, so the year after I moved to Spain and stud­ied fash­ion at a Uni­ver­si­ty there. Return­ing to Den­mark years lat­er after hav­ing lived abroad.

Foto: by Signe

Fred­erik­shavn is where we cur­rent­ly house our stu­dio and it is actu­al­ly also where I grew up. It is a har­bor-city in the north­ern part of Den­mark. I have lived a few years abroad, and when I returned things kind of ran­dom­ly just turned into set­ting up the brand here. As we sell world­wide, our phys­i­cal loca­tion is not essen­tial at this point.

The aim of “by Signe” was to do sus­tain­able clothes from the beginning?
Absolute­ly, I have a huge con­science, so when first cre­at­ing the brand it was essen­tial to me to cre­ate a prod­uct that I could vouch for 100 per­cent. I set up my own pro­duc­tion to prove to every scep­tic, that it is pos­si­ble in todays indus­try, to com­bine design and hand­craft eth­i­cal­ly and sus­tain­ably to cre­ate a deep­er dimen­sion of hon­esty and soul behind the brand.

Foto: by Signe

Are you pro­duc­ing every­thing in Denmark?
Yes. We have the com­plete design process gath­ered under one roof in Den­mark, where all col­lec­tions are pro­duced and shipped direct­ly from the stu­dio. This pro­vides us with an advan­tage of being able to con­trol every sin­gle step in the prod­uct devel­op­ment and sup­ply chain from hav­ing the raw mate­r­i­al to a fin­ished prod­uct in a sus­tain­able, eth­i­cal and green approach.

Can you describe your cre­ative process in sus­tain­able fash­ion? Do you come across any obsta­cles that keep you from design­ing what you want?
I nev­er com­pro­mise on any vision I might have, so I would have to say no. My style of design­ing is and my inspi­ra­tion is very abstract and most­ly dri­ven by feel­ings & emo­tions. When design­ing I focus a lot on com­fort which goes beau­ti­ful­ly hand in hand with soft and healthy organ­ic  mate­ri­als. When I visu­al­ize a piece of cloth­ing I walk around with my eyes closed try­ing to imag­ine how it fits and feels on the body. My vision is to cre­ate hon­est and fem­i­nine easy­wear that every woman should be able to wear with com­fort sea­son after sea­son. My muse is not beau­ti­ful, she is nat­ur­al art, cre­ative and inde­pen­dent. She wears what is nat­ur­al and healthy and she cares about todays pol­lut­ing fash­ion industry.

Do you think “Fair Fash­ion” is still a niche mar­ket in Den­mark or does it become more mainstream?
I absolute­ly think it is a niche mar­ket still if you focus only on the sus­tain­able aspect. You don’t meet it a lot, but I def­i­nite­ly think its win­ning through slow­ly. How­ev­er, I wish to sell my designs, not just a piece of sus­tain­able cloth­ing. The sus­tain­able aspect of what I do is not first pri­or­i­ty in any sales sit­u­a­tion. I want peo­ple to buy it because they like it. The sus­tain­able back­ground of the brand is some­thing we wish to hold to sup­port & add a deep­er val­ue to the gar­ment at the same time as offer­ing a con­scious choice for buy­ers and consumers.

Foto: by Signe

What is your favorite piece in your col­lec­tion and why?
My favorite piece of the cur­rent sum­mer col­lec­tion is the ‘strap top’. Its pos­si­bly the most sim­ple design I have ever done, but its clean and min­i­mal­ist and it looks good on you.

One last and com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent ques­tion: You are based in Nord­jyl­land, what shouldn’t we miss when vis­it­ing the area?
You can­not miss a sun­set on the west-coast. Spend­ing a rainy day in the mod­ern muse­um ‘Kun­sten’ in Aal­borg would also be one of my best rec­om­men­da­tions if you are ever around.

Thank you so much for your time! 

bysigne.com
instagram.com/bysigne
facebook.com/bysignedk