ANNOUNCEMENT
By Sara Flaaen Licius, 31.05 12:00. Photos: Iver Ambrosius and private.
As we are preparing for another season of the Oslo Runway Fashion Week, we are excited to announce emerging brands: Anna Ringstad, with her eponymous brand, and Johanna Lundell and with her brand Wilhelmina, as the NEXT brands of ORW26!
Since the program launched in 2023 the Program Committee has screened and selected several impressive brands for NEXT. Among the advantages, it allows the brands a slot on the Official Schedule of the Oslo Runway Fashion Week to set up their own show or presentation with a grant of 50.000 NOK.
Get to know Anna Ringstad
At Anna Ringstad, clothing, content and craft collapse into a continuous performance of online identity. The brand is built around the aesthetics of aspiration, and explores fashion as both commodity and commentary. Rooted in platform culture, it examines how taste, authenticity and desire are continuously staged and negotiated. Ringstad treats lo-fi craft as a visual and conceptual tool to express the tension between sincerity and irony.
Read the Q&A below. Find Anna Ringstad's imagery in our Image Bank here.
ORW: What inspired you to apply for NEXT this year?
AR: NEXT felt like a meaningful context to present my within, especially when it comes to showcasing locally. I was interested in entering a platform that could hold both the commercial and conceptual dimensions of what I do, and it was the perfect way to introduce the brand to a broader audience, explains Ringstad.
ORW: Where were you and what did you feel when you got the news that you were selected?
AR: Actually I was in North Macedonia for a residency to work on research for the new collection when I got the news. I remember the surreal feeling of how timing could not have been more perfect. It was like an XP-boost in terms of inspiration and support!
ORW: How are you preparing to show your collection during ORW26? Any hints on what’s to come?
AR: A lot of the preparation for the collection has been about digging into the 2010s and looking at how that decade of sincerity made its mark on the current times. I’ve been looking a lot into how femininity expresses itself differently from East to West in Europe, and still debating who does it better. Expect lace interpretations, awkward colour combinations and impractically perfect solutions to all your non-problems!
ORW: Where did your love for fashion come from?
AR: I was very drawn to fashion as a tool for world-building, and how it encapsulates so many different occupations to express something emotional, performative and slightly obsessive. People using style as a way to construct identity all shaped my relationship to fashion from a young age through internet culture and reality television. I’d say my love for it started when I recognised the desperate desire that came from dupe and DIY-culture, and how that fed into the whole system of fashion at large. To me it says a lot about how much we really care about how we’re being perceived, says Ringstad.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out at info@oslorunway.no.
