When Bryan Conway first arrived in Stockholm he jumped on a local ferry, the Cinderella II, and rode its circular route over and over for four hours. “The inspectors were like, What is he doing? I wasn’t going anywhere; I was just looking,” he said. That was 18 months ago, and while the freshness of Conway’s outsider’s eye has to some extent lessened, this collection reflected its observations.
As the video shot on the Cinderella II showed, Stockholm’s commuters brave chilly conditions between their moments of ’80s-decor respite on board: a split-hood hoodie with zippers at the front and back was an ingenious and pleasing garment that allowed the voluminous hood to be converted into a sailor-ish collar according to need. Sweaters that incorporated balaclava-snoody arrangements were inspired by a colleague of Conway’s who was always misplacing her balaclava before her bike ride home, while the no-nonsense waxed sou’westers were adaptations of a child’s hat. Knee-high boots were uppers against moulded Wellington-style soles, and sort of inbuilt storm flap collars on waxed jackets could serve as both protection and ornament.
These attractively functional elements were accented against gentle abstract prints created from photographs taken by Kacper Kasprzyk as he wandered Stockholm in an echo of Conway’s own progress. Tailoring tweaks included a suit in tough gabardine—“you couldn’t cut it with a knife, and I love that”—based on a 1920s archive piece and a womenswear suit in gray in a cut revived from the late 1990s, so three-buttoned and single-breasted. A house quirk to cut two buttonholes on jacket lapels was transferred to a range of outerwear, notably including a pea jacket in a shaggily handsome gray wool that Conway said had been sourced from the distinctive sheep of Gotland, whose fleeces Tiger’s sustainability manager had learned were going unsold. Conway’s commuter-conceived collection worked well.
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