Totally Toteme: the Swedish house redefining Scandi style
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There has been much talk of stealth wealth in fashion, but it is mostly applied to an aesthetic: neutral tones, plush materials, richness exuded through minimal markers. Toteme, the ready-to-wear label founded by Elin Kling and her husband Karl Lindman 10 years ago, not only looks the part, it has the business to match. Last year the brand listed more than $100mn in revenues, and looks set to achieve closer to $150mn in 2024 with 14 stores open globally, and another six set to open in the next year. It’s all been achieved in relative discretion: no celebrity ambassadors, very little advertising until recently – even comparatively little press, which may seem surprising considering that Kling was once a famous blogger, and how handsome and affable they are.
But then, the couple are Swedish, and Toteme is essentially a Swedish brand. They both adhere to certain tenets of “Scandi” style – sober hues, practical design, a rigorous eye for detail – and are keen to go beyond that too. “It’s not what Swedish or Scandinavian fashion used to be,” says Lindman, sitting in an office with his wife at Toteme’s Stockholm HQ over a breakfast tray of crackers, kiwis and berries. He wears jeans and a navy cardigan; she has on a white poloneck under a thin cream sweater, a gold chain and gold studs, indigo selvedge jeans and black slingbacks. “It’s what it will be.”
Toteme has its hit products – its viral scarf-coat (from €880) has spawned several knock-offs; its demure but contemporary T-Lock bag (from €1,190), its bestselling new category, has sold 16,000 pieces in the last year – but the aim has always been to not be defined by one product, or be susceptible to hype. Still, there can be no mistaking a real momentum now. They launched a jewellery line ahead of opening a store on Mayfair’s Mount Street last winter, then showed for the first time during Paris couture week in January. This month it will open its refurbished flagship store in Stockholm, part of a 10‑year anniversary celebration to which they have invited various international editors and local industry friends. Another store will open in New York in September. All along, its genius has been to position itself alongside other high-end labels selling a similar aesthetic of smart business-casualwear, but with a more democratic price point. On Mount Street it looks the part, but is far more affordable than many of its immediate neighbours.
“Toteme gives customers, me included, refined and minimal wardrobe staples,” says Libby Page, market director at Net-a-Porter, which has stocked the brand since it launched. “We have always been drawn to Elin’s elevated approach to a curated wardrobe, with collections that transcend seasonal trends.” “Toteme feels inherent to a style we all want to embody, rather than seeming like a follower of a fast-paced trend,” says the stylist and consultant Alexandra Carl. The brand feeds a contemporary desire for “bold simplicity; well-crafted pieces”, she says. “I think there’s a false perception that rapid growth is desirable. Toteme proves the opposite. Slow and steady wins the race.”
For the couple, it’s the vindication of an enterprise that is almost exactly the same age as their marriage: they got married in summer 2014, and launched Toteme in the autumn that same year. Lindman, a former art director for Interview magazine who oversees the branding of the operation, is suave and garrulous; Kling leads on design. She is as fastidious with her approach to fashion as she is with her words. “When I think about the early years, I’m surprised we’re still married, to be honest,” she says. “There were some tough times.” “Elin cannot go to a supermarket because she gets overwhelmed by all the choices,” says Lindman, turning to her. “You’re very good at knowing what you want – and I think that what Elin wants is something that other women feel too. It’s about, perhaps, trying to simplify things.” “I don’t dream about having the biggest walk-in closet with tonnes of clothes,” Kling says in agreement. “That’s a nightmare for me.”
Each was drawn to style from a young age. Lindman recalls collecting the soaps and fragrance samples his grandmother would give him, being obsessed with “these beautiful boxes”. Kling, who grew up on a farm, was always particular about how she looked. She had clothes made for her by her sewing-teacher mother; for her school prom, bucking the consensus among her classmates for “silk lavender princessy gowns”, Kling asked her to make a simple black sequinned dress (which was already, really, very Toteme). She first became a successful blogger, then a fashion journalist – so successful, in fact, that she had a collaboration with H&M in 2011. From the start, she was all over the detail. “I was always exploring, but I was not, ‘Oh, I should do my own brand.’”
The idea for Toteme came to the couple over a glass of wine on holiday in Jamaica, when they had been dating for a few years. They began to wonder about a certain woman and how she would live – what her wardrobe would be like, her house, even what flowers she would buy.
“And the problem – or the greatness – with Elin, is that if you sit and talk about something,” says Lindman, “the next day, she’s sitting there with a blank paper and a pen saying, ‘OK, let’s go!’” “I like to have big dreams,” shrugs Kling. “But I also like to realise them.”
They didn’t feel there was a gap in the market – quite the opposite. “It was more about the curation,” says Kling. “It’s quite precise, how we think; when we design the clothes and also how we wear them.” Products had to serve a need for the clients. “It’s design for life,” she says. From the outset, their restrained approach felt surprising. They were then making discreet, logo-free clothes in a decade of rampant logomania, and they were doing so without courting investors to pump money into a speculative business. When they were starting out, a designer friend of Kling’s had advised her against bringing in capital. “He said. ‘Learning how to actually make a healthy business is so important. So go do it yourself.’”
“It was common sense in many ways,” says Lindman. “Our vision was: we have very limited funds. How do we do something we believe in, that sells? And, hopefully, if that sells, we can build a slightly bigger collection, and hopefully that sells.” They were profitable from the first collection, which included the Annecy, a loose long cashmere coat (from €1,190) that is still one of their bestsellers. “We’ve been going very much step by step,” says Lindman. “The product was so important because if we didn’t sell the product, we would have just run out of business.” Looking back, says Kling, they took a lot of risks because they didn’t know any better. But the fact there were always two of them meant it was easier to push each other along. Plus: “I can always blame things we do wrong on Karl, you know?”
The result is that “it’s been a steady growth like this since day one”, says Kling, who quotes a compound annual growth rate of 80 per cent over the past seven years. The brand has mostly operated on a 50-50 mix between direct-to-consumer and wholesale. At first, people asked why they would sell with major stores such as Net-a-Porter. Lindman has no such hesitations: “We want to learn from them, we want exposure, and we think they’re great for brands, so why not be there with them?”
This approach has had its drawbacks: when Matches went into administration recently, it was revealed that Toteme was owed nearly £1mn by the e-commerce platform – it is unlikely it will get it back. Opening their own stores makes them less vulnerable to such dangers, especially in a more volatile retail world. “A strong wholesale distribution will remain relevant for Toteme,” the couple email later. “However, as the brand is growing globally we’ll continue expanding our retail footprint.”
Toteme’s designs are seasonal, but many have remained unchanged. “If a design of a coat is four years old, it doesn’t make it irrelevant,” says Lindman. “We still care about that product. So many of the pieces that we started with are what we are selling today.” It is, he volunteers, “our version of fashion sustainability”. When they have eventually moved into other segments of the market, it has been considered. “We are very careful when we go into categories,” says Kling. “Because it’s also about mastering what you already do.”
Page reports a 250 per cent increase in searches for black Toteme bags at Net-a-Porter over the past six months. Its boots have seen an 150 per cent increase in searches in the same time period. At Mytheresa, “the brand excels in all categories, including ready-to-wear, shoes and bags – a remarkable achievement”, says Richard Johnson, chief commercial and sustainability officer. “Key pieces include the scarf jacket, now reimagined as a coat, and the highly sought after T-Lock bag, which has attained It-bag status. By maintaining limited markdowns, they uphold their brand image and target customers who value purchasing at full price. It’s a more accessible price compared with true luxury brands.”
“We like the position, and it’s very intentional,” says Lindman. High-end luxury is pushing its prices even higher and higher, so it’s not “even for the one per cent – it’s 0.5 per cent”, he says. “We want our customers to get the same emotions out of buying a piece from us as from something from a luxury label. But we don’t want it to be just for that top layer. That client is more than welcome, but so is the aspirational customer.”
“We are serving both spectra,” adds Kling. “And I think it’s a very Swedish price position.”
Toteme was founded in New York, but the couple moved themselves and the brand back to Stockholm seven years ago, when their elder daughter was two. “The day we moved back to Sweden,” says Lindman, “is the day we found the purpose of what we wanted to achieve.” It had become essential for them to locate their “Toteme woman”, he continues, “and we felt it was important to find her here. Because it’s our roots and heritage. Sweden obviously has its share of problems and issues, but in general we’re very proud of our country and its values. Our purpose was to really build a Swedish house. And the second we started dreaming about that, everything else became very clear.” That said, “Swedes can be quite ‘correct’”, says Kling. “I always used to say that in everything we do, we kind of need the 15 per cent punk, and I guess New York brought that.”
Though there is much talk of this “Toteme woman” – somebody Kling might spot on the street or have lunch with – there’s no denying that the Toteme woman, ultimately, is Kling. When the brand launched, she felt it was important to build the brand without relying on her celebrity. Today, she notes, most clients come to Toteme without knowing who she is.
Where next? They have studied other brands assiduously, citing lifestyle behemoths like Giorgio Armani or Ralph Lauren as cases they admire. “As we see some luxury brands slowing down, I think they have even more of an opportunity,” says New York-based luxury consultant Robert Burke, “because they have such a smart pricing structure and aesthetic.” Burke also compares them to Thom Browne, another designer who started out independent, “stayed very consistent in his vision, very controlled and strategic in all of his moves”, and eventually sold to Ermenegildo Zegna Group for $500mn.
Lindman and Kling are in it for the long-term. They remain the majority owners and have no intention to sell, for now. “They will have to drag us out of here,” says Lindman. “This is a family business.” As for sustaining a happy marriage alongside a business, Kling is an enthusiastic advocate: “I would advise it. We are as excited as each other.” After all, she reasons, “anything you do in a marriage, even if it’s renovating a bathroom, can be quite challenging if you’re not used to working together. And we are building stores!”
Hair and make-up, Johanna Norlander
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