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From fashion school in Milan and Vogue to creating a new generation of sustainability advocates - ft. Linda Hörnquist

Linda Sofia Hönquist has been passionately interested in sustainability since she was a little girl. After studying fashion in Milan and being featured in Italian Vogue for her redesign 14 years ago, she moved to Norway where she started her own store redesigning clothes and wedding dresses for people. Today, she runs a sewing studio where she teaches children about redesign, reuse and recycling - which will also open up for adults when Covid restrictions eases. She also runs a sustainable wine bar. We talk about her journey and how to create a more sustainable life.

Show notes

Linda Sofia Hörnquist – Passion for Sustainability

Linda Sofia Hörnquist (38) wrote an essay about how we  destroy our planet at the age of 9. At the age of 10 she started sowing and redesigning her own clothing and has been doing it almost every day since. Fast forward to adulthood, she decided to go to Milan to study fashion design. She rapidly joined the elite of the school for her skills on sewing. Together with some classmates, she won a competition to go to Kenya, where they visited clothing factories. Both from studying fashion in Italy and her trip to Africa, she discovered the dark side of this industry. She decided she would never be a part of the fast fashion industry, but rather make a positive difference by doing re-design. Italian Vogue wrote a piece on Linda and her class mate’s  work with redesign 14 years ago, and she has continued the sustainable adventure since.

Sustainable Entrepreneurship

After her studies, Linda moved to Norway and started her own business redesigning clothes and wedding dresses. She has been actively involved in making her town, Asker, more sustainable since then. In the beginning of 2020, she opened up a sewing studio for children where she teaches them to sew, redesign, reuse and recycle clothes. It has become so popular that there are now waiting lists to join. Linda plans to open up for adults to join workshops as well when the Covid restrictions eases. Furthermore, she runs a wine bar in the town center together with two others. They renovated the space by only using second hand interior and even used paint that was thrown in the trash. 
 

Moving Towards a Circular Economy

Asker is very focused on sustainable solutions and are planning to open a second-hand shopping center. Together with big companies such as The Norwegian Bank (DNB), Bergans etc., Linda was invited to the table to share her visions. In her opinion, a second hand shopping center will largely function as a way for people to feel better about themselves as they buy new things and just drops off the old stuff at the center. What Linda proposes instead is to create a service center where people can come to repair their clothes, electronics, bikes, shoes etc. so that people will seek out quality products that lasts longer and can get repaired. Seeing that the tax rules in Norway demands 25% tax on products sold every time it gets resold commercially, offering services are just as profitable, if not more. Teaching has no tax on it, so Linda suggests having workshops teaching people to repair their own products as well. 

 

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