Interviews|March 2026

Oskar Eriksson on the craft of collecting

In the basement of his apartment in central Stockholm, our menswear designer Oskar Eriksson keeps boxes filled with historical denim pieces he’s collected over decades: from torn-down jackets and heavily mended dungarees to scraps and remnants – some even rusted –, hand-embroidered work shirts, and decades-old jeans he still wears from time to time.

There is a lot to learn from these pieces. Oskar refers to them as traces of industrial history, and while his collection consists of garments, the way he speaks about them reveals an archive of stories. ‘The fragments from workwear are found in mines, because when the clothes were worn out, the scraps were still used for something. I have one that dates back to 1910. It’s quite rusted, so it was probably used to fix some kind of pipe. I also have a jacket found in a mine in Nevada, and it still has candle wax stains on the sleeves, since they didn’t have lamps: they held candles to see while working in the dark.’ 

 

In some way or another, he’s spent half his life working with and collecting denim, from a jeans shop in his hometown to his beginnings as a collector of five-pocket jeans. The influence of his archive, though, is not so literal – repetition and consistency guide his approach: ‘It’s very rare that I look for one garment and say, I want to do something out of this. It’s more a combination of different things that influences me. I see my designer job as a possibility to explore, improve and refine the things that I work on. I like the idea of things evolving rather than just being switched out,’ Oskar says. 

 

‘I enjoy garments with patina, character and wear. The best thing is if you can find something that’s been handed down, really used and repaired. It becomes obvious that someone has lived in these and cherished them.’ Collecting, then, is definitely not a convenience, but a craft that speaks of the subjectivity of the collector – in this case, he claims ‘it’s both about the hunt, but also the ability to revisit and rediscover’ – a framing and a commitment for design that lasts.  

Man examining denim fabric swatch over a book with various fabric samples on a table in a bright room.
A person holding up a pair of distressed blue jeans in a modern, bright room with a couch and framed picture in the background.