Reykjavik Fashion Festival 2011

Words Tim Brodhagen
Photos Craig Wetherby

After nearly four months on the road across the US, Canada, and Europe jumping off the good life on half of the world’s major mountain ranges, the last place I thought I’d end up starting my Spring would be Iceland. But a call from old friends Imba and Jessie beckoning Craig Wetherby and I to the island was too much to resist, especially when the invitation was to be part of an elite group of media selected to attend the second ever Reykjavik Fashion Festival.

If you’ve never been to Iceland before, a million stories couldn’t do it justice. It’s an island sitting on a mass of volcanoes that are themselves sitting on a tectonic rift in the middle of the ocean. There are almost no trees anywhere and the weather changes completely multiple times per hour, from bright warm sun, to snow, to sleet, to rain, to every shade of grey imaginable, back to sun. They say if you don’t like the weather in Iceland, just wait fifteen minutes. It’s not an exaggeration.

To say the trip was surreal would be an understatement. Only five hours out of NY, we felt like we’d landed on the moon as soon as we left the airport. From eerie rock formations along the roads to pockets of mist seeping sporadically from the ground to the multisyllabic language that was completely impossible to decipher, many things felt other worldly as we made our way across the landscape to Reykjavik.

Once we got there it never stopped. Iceland’s entire population is only 300,000 and Reykjavik’s is less than 200,000 so when you are with the right people, they take you straight to the top. For the next week we lived the Icelandic highlife, cavorting with the crème de la crème of the country from musicians to politicians to fashionistas, the only person we didn’t meet was Bjork! We sat front row at all the shows, drinks tucked between our legs at the Reykjavik Art Museum, witnessing the Fall collections for Iceland’s impressively diverse roster of designers: Andersen & Lauth, Áróra, BIRNA, Disdis, E label, Eygló, Forynja, HANNA Felting, Hildur Yeoman, Kalda, Kron by KronKron, Mundi, Nikita, Rain Dear, Royal Extreme, Rey, Sruli Recht, Shadow Creatures, Sonja Bent, Spakmannsspjarir and Ýr.

Of the group, Sruli Recht, who used a Viking Zach Galifianakis on drums to syncopate his show, Nikita, who’s evolution from streetwear to couture has fully arrived, and Mundi, Iceland fashion’s golden boy who used zinc faced models in ski boots to show his collection, were the show stealers.  The particular blend of functionality necessitated by Iceland’s crazy weather and experimentation that seems to be influenced by the country’s extra-terrestrial aura made for designs that were unique to say the least.

Once the shows were over came the most surreal part of the journey. Instead of the requisite house DJ and douchebag fete that usually accompanies a fashion event of this magnitude came a major moment in Hip Hop’s global movement: Ghostface Killah’s first ever show in Iceland. As Ghost stepped up to perform to the overstuffed house of crazed Wu fans who had spent the night trying to boo the opening acts off the stage yelling “Wuuuuuu,” Trife da God captured it in one sentence: “Fucking Iceland!”

With the festivities over, the final days of the trip took yet another dip into the surreal. First a sunny cloudless day of exploring with Nikita’s Heida Birgisdottir and model Andrea Röfn Jónasdóttir who took us to Lake Kleifarvatn, a glacial oasis that  recently opened up and started to swallow itself leaving a bubbling steaming rift right where the middle of the lake used to be. While Craig shot some exclusive looks from Nikita’s Fall collection, we went from the cliffs surrounding Kleifarvatn through sulfurous hot springs and onto a moss covered volcano field that swept all the way to the ocean, the whole time grilling the girls about trolls, fairies, mini horses, the co-mingling of the three, and what Iceland’s real connection to outer space is. Unfortunately I can’t talk much about what they told us, you’ll have to go there yourself to find out.

At the end of that already mind bendingly amazing day, we were treated to one more bit of amazement, and one that only further connected Iceland to space in our minds. Well past midnight, on a desolate stretch of road two hours outside of the city, we saw a full display of the Northern Lights. An equal part fireworks show, radiation leak, and acid trip, seeing the lights literally dance across the full 180 degree spectrum of the sky was so insane that if Craig hadn’t caught some images, I wouldn’t be completely positive that we had seen it at all.

As if we couldn’t have ended on an even higher note, our final day consisted of an all day float in the Blue Lagoon, a milky moon-bath that leaves a tingle in your skin for days after, before a flight home that was shorter than coming from LAX. Don’t just take my words for it, check out some more of Craig’s photo’s below for a small taste of the experience and stay tuned for our feature on Nikita. As they say in Iceland Takk Fyrir!!