Celebrating our first Award
Thank you Plaza Interiör for Honorary Award 2022, in the category On the Yoga Mat.
Green is good for well-being, we can see that when we look into Celia Ingesson's home. That the apartment in Vasastan in Stockholm, wears that particular color reflects the owner in so many ways. - Green is wonderfully calming, says Celia thoughtfully. She is a thinker. It is precisely thoughts about the well-being of both humans and the planet that have brought us here, to interview the winner of the Plaza Interiörs Honorary Award 2022, in the category On the Yoga Mat.
Celia's whole new life revolves around green thinking, she has taken her green fingers to the fashion world where she previously saw so much black - in the symbolic sense of the color, fashion people like to wear black - and she had enough. Celia Ingesson made a difference, she started her own fashion brand where well-being is focus - also that of the planet.
The target group has a clear female profile, and that includes thr greatest of mothers of All - Mother Earth. The result was green, just like her life – and home – namely Greningline.
Greeningline A Swedish yoga and leisure brand that only works with natural raw materials in both materials and coloring. The decision turned out to be bigger than Celia herself first realized. The requirement entailed design limitations as well as new logistics and product innovation but Celia bit the bullet. She had a green dream. - I have worked in both Paris and New York, and been visiting factories around the globe where the shadow sides of the fashion industry often was palpable. The chemicals used, especially when coloring garments are dangerous for both humans and the environment.
That Greeningline was released during the pandemic, what we can call the modern man's “pause”, and time for reflection at home, was not entirely a coincidence. After all, we are talking about a period of "home-cocooning". Like the outside world, Celia also has her security in her – green – home. She also has a background as a trend scout, and although she did not foresee the pandemic, she sensed that the importance of the home would increase. At least it did for herself. - I feel so comfortable here, with quite a few, but selected pieces of furniture and accessories. There is a calm to long for, to be embraced by, she says. She is not a yoga teacher herself, (although she can sometimes sound like one), with her reassuring composure. It is the tone of someone who has come to a realization, she has – finally – reached the stage in life when she can do what she wants, what she has to.
- Honestly, it came to a point when I felt that I could no longer live with the bad conscious and knowledge I accused over the years and the impressions of the factories, of the thousands who work there, who must remain in an air that is barely breathable, in cities that are completely gray with pollution. She remembers how she herself had problems with eczema and asthma as a child. She reacted strongly to both chemicals and synthetic fabrics. That's why she started sewing her own clothes and colored them with tea and coffee. Something bad gave birth to something good, so, a genuine interest in fashion - and a passion for green, regardless of color, we're talking symbolism here. In 2022, she is on a similar track. Greeningline's garments are dyed with leaves, bark, yes, even food scraps. It provides color shifts, often uniquely personal, which gives a vivid feeling. After all, that's what Celia's dream is about, life. - Many people talk about eco-materials and recycled materials, but very few about the big environmental culprits, dyeing and finishing that should make the fabrics wrinkle-free and antibacterial. I want to show how far you can go towards chemical-free clothes. Move boundaries. Behind her, she has solid years in both H&M and Ralph Lauren. Valuable knowledge has been accumulated in the experience bank, she is now making use of that capital. She has learned what she wants to do, but also not.
- If you want to work with vegetable dyes, you have to buy the fabric yourself. You have to pay for the dyeing and then the manufacturing. But it's worth it. The response has been positive, but the thresholds are many. It can be like that when you want to open completely new doors in your life and change your own behaviour, but above all that of others. Celia laid the plans several years ago, but the industry is not adapted to natural and chemical-free materials. Low demand, complicated materials, tricky handling. - Few weavers and spinners actively want to work with plant-dyed yarns because they are uneven, a little more challenging and delicate. Thresholds, like mountains, are there to cross. Now she sits here in her home. Here she has drawn, calculated, consulted. The tones on the walls and kitchen are undeniably reminiscent of the palette in the clothes, muted and measured, stylish. The fact that the art in the living room shows exactly greenery feels completely right in the context. Modern design classics creep in without taking over the attention. The String book shelves reflect the sober but kindly modest aura that seems to surround Celia herself.
The fact that she likes to decorate with plants as color accents is also a mirror of her organic vision. Celia sits down on the kitchen bench for her portrait. She looks out, philosophically, as if it were something other than her Siberian backyard, she sees the time that has passed, the thresholds she has crossed. Greeningline is now rolling. The models are around 15 - "they don't get more than 25" - and seasonal thinking, she against. The materials mainly consist of Tencel, but also linen, silk and organic cotton. - Since I have chosen to work only with waste such as leaves, bark and food scraps, and not, for example, fruits or flowers, it takes an extra long time to get the color extracts. But it has to take the time it takes, like when you made clothes in the old days. I have a passion for this and can wait. Slow fashion on the yoga mat and in the home, we reward that this year.
