There seems to be a resurgence of a kind of traditional Nordic minimalism across Scandinavia. Joining Tôteme in this movement are Envelope 1976 in Oslo and The Garment in Copenhagen. Then there’s Bite Studios, a label founded in 2016 that operates between London and Stockholm. Headed by William Lundgren and Veronika Kant, the brand’s focus is responsible minimalism: Bite is an acronym for “By Independent Thinkers for Environmental Progress.”
“From the beginning, we restricted ourselves to only using organic or low-impact materials, so that’s really how we work with our collections, building up our material library and designing from that,” explained Kant. Collections are numbered to emphasize Bite’s evolutionary approach to design; in addition, its garments come with a lifetime buy-back guarantee.
At Bite, said Kant, minimalism is associated with power—a soft power, that is. This is expressed in such pieces as a “horse brown” pant suit that might be worn with a sharply tailored coat in the same color and an ivory silk blouse. There are full legged pants to wear all the way to the ground, and others with a deep and deliberate fold-up cuff, while feather-weight knits are ideal for layering, perhaps under a midi dress that manages to be quite subtle despite its shocking pink hue.
