Just when you think Iceland’s situation can’t get any more incredulous, our national clown opens his mouth.  more

The executive board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved Iceland’s request for a loan last night. The IMF will contribute USD 2.1 billion and the Nordic countries, Russia and Poland USD 3 billion in additional loans.  more

Click on the picture to accept a dinner invitation from one of the finest restaurants in Reykjavík, the Lobster House, which specializes in Icelandic lobster and is located in the heart of the city. This audio slideshow is brought to you by one of the restaurant’s chefs and shows you how to prepare one of his favorite lobster recipes.   more

Fjallabyggd (“Mountain Settlement”) is a skier’s dream. Its slopes are perfect for slaloming and there are also tracks for telemark skiing. Winter sporting enthusiasts can also go ice skating or rent snowmobiles. In summer, Fjallabyggd turns into a paradise for hikers. Read this special promotion about one of Iceland’s best hidden gems.  more

As former Senior Designer at both Calvin Klein and Gucci as well as Design Director at La Perla, Steinunn Sigurdardóttir is no stranger to the glitter and glam of the fashion world. This year she was the first fashion designer ever to be awarded the prestigious Söderberg Prize by the Röhsska Museum of Design and Decorative Arts in Gothenburg, Sweden, and a retrospective of her work will accompany the award ceremony in November.

Published in the 2008 summer issue of Iceland Review – IR 46.02. By Tobias Munthe, photo by Páll Stefánsson.

Tobias Munthe: So, after all those years in the US and in Italy, why did you finally decide to come back to Iceland?

Steinunn Sigurdardóttir: Well, I actually started moving my furniture back as early as 1995. For many years after that I was commuting between Iceland and Italy. After eight years of airports I think the moment came when I just said, “I have to stop doing this!” Basta! Finito signore!

TM: So you came home, unpacked your bags and started your own signature label?

SS: I started my own label in 2000, purely as a way of addressing the question that had been bugging me, “what’s the next challenge?” After you’ve worked for Gucci for many years and for Calvin Klein, is the next logical step to go and work for Donna Karan? I did take a job as Design Director at La Perla to see what it felt like—that was a fabulous experience and I learned a lot—but ultimately working for someone else was always going to be more of the same.

TM: Having worked for such prestigious labels and having enjoyed such success, how do you look back on the ambitions you had when you left school?

SS: Leaving Parsons [School of Design] and entering the fashion world as someone from Iceland—well, nobody had really done it before; nobody really knew what it was. I came to New York without knowing who Henry Bendel was or Bergdorf Goodman. I had no idea. I think I was naïve enough to succeed based on the fact that I didn’t really know what I was getting into. It wasn’t being smart, it was being naïve.

TM: How did you get into the industry?

SS: The one thing that got me into all these companies is that I am truly a knitting expert. I have knitted since I was nine years old and I can knit in my head any stitch imaginable. I can work with technicians at a factory and tell them exactly what to do. I speak that language. That’s an expertise I had that people wanted.

TM: In a culture which is essentially sustained by a small handful of conglomerate companies mass-producing clothing, you seem to stand out in your attention to detail and your boutique approach to fashion.

SS: Knowing detail is what got me into the business. Iceland is a perfect place for boutique culture but people need to be educated. Craftsmanship is what makes beautiful clothes and, yes, sometimes that’s more expensive. For instance, all of our fabrics are made in Yorkshire. I try to work with little mills that can make proper cloths in the same way that they have been doing for generations. I can go to China and do mass production on a massive scale but it doesn’t interest me. I want to work with old-fashioned, traditional people who know their trade and know their craft.

I sit on the board of the FIT [Fashion Institute of Technology] and I say to the students: “Guys, do something, learn how to knit, learn how to embroider, learn a skill.”

TM: Would you ever want to go back to your old, New York life?

SS: You know something? I don’t want to go back to that ever again. I don’t want to live in New York and even though Iceland can feel small sometimes, I have never been exposed to so much music, art, culture and to other design worlds. In New York and in Italy the fashion world eats you up—because it’s so big, you don’t need artists, you don’t need musicians, you only need other people who work in fashion. What’s nice about living in Reykjavík is that you are exposed to all areas of culture.

TM: Where do you get your inspiration?

SS: There is one source that I continuously go back to and that is the Icelandic National Museum: I own every single book that the Museum has published that has pictures in it. There is so much to learn about Icelandic fashion, about our national costumes about the traditions that have all but died out here. You can see photos of beautiful clothes, all made locally and all made by hand. I also love the Textile Museum at Blönduós—it houses the collection of a wonderful woman called Halldóra Bjarnadóttir who spun all her wool herself and was a real treasure. What’s wonderful about that museum is that women from all over the country have sent in unique pieces of their own to add to the collection, so it really constitutes an Icelandic fashion museum for the last 100 or so years!

TM: You’ve spoken about using landscape and natural texture as inspiration, how does that come through in practice?

SS: Well yes, I’d say landscape plays a central role in my work. You can find lava, sand, rock, mist and moss in my designs. I’ve always loved these textures, I’m drawn to them and I grew up with them, so it’s normal that I try to knit my own kind of lava! I did a whole collection while I was Design Director at La Perla which was influenced purely by Icelandic nature. You look at lava and it can become a shirt with lace or it could be made of silk or macramé. Lace which is very coarse can make some beautiful rocky patterns. Or if you look at the snow, think of all the different qualities it has—the bloom of the ice, the sun on the ice can become the color of this shirt or that item can be the color of dirty ice or frost-bitten snow! You can see the links between the clothes and nature.

TM: What direction would you like to see fashion take?

SS: I would love to see fashion become recognized within the arena of ‘design’ and not some other, separate category. Fashion shouldn’t be swallowed up by the big commercialism of it; it is a form of design. At the heart of this lies the need for craftsmanship—if we can get that back then it’s a wonderful thing. We might have more people making things than sitting in front of computers!

Four times a year the print edition of Iceland Review brings you a wealth of articles on all aspects of life in Icelandic including Páll Stefánsson's latest images of the country's majestic landscape. Click here to read about the current issue and here to subscribe.

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It’s in the papers – crime is on the rise and there’s reason to be scared. As paranoia and xenophobia are on the up, fear’s selling like never before and the Icelandic reading public’s appetite for murder and mayhem has never been keener. This trend looks like more than a passing fad. The Icelandic thriller is here to stay!  more

“He just came into the world with a big bang—just like the earthquake,” Ólafur Eyjólfsson told the local paper about his son, who was born at the national hospital in Reykjavík while an earthquake shook the southwest of Iceland on May 29. The earthquake measured 6.3 on the Richter scale—a typical size for region.  more

As former Senior Designer at both Calvin Klein and Gucci as well as Design Director at La Perla, Steinunn Sigurdardóttir is no stranger to the glitter and glam of the fashion world. This year she was the first fashion designer ever to be awarded the prestigious Söderberg Prize.  more

Amiina’s sound is intimate and rife with mellifluous dialogue. Though lyrics are few and far between, that’s not to say Amiina's new album Kurr doesn’t strike a chord with its listeners. On the contrary, it resonates in the most unexpected of ways.  more

Click on the picture to accept a dinner invitation from one of the finest restaurants in Reykjavík, the Lobster House, which specializes in Icelandic lobster and is located in the heart of the city. This audio slideshow is brought to you by one of the restaurant’s chefs and shows you how to prepare one of his favorite lobster recipes.   more

In the spirit of the upcoming holiday season, Iceland Review is pleased to announce a special Christmas subscription offer: The book The Hidden People of Iceland (2008) by illustrator Brian Pilkington and folklorist Terry Gunnell comes free with every new subscription to the magazine. All subscribers are part of a lottery and could win a trip to Iceland. Click here to subscribe.  more

Million Percent Men tells the story of Engilbert, who, upon returning to Iceland from America, becomes a successful businessman, leading a luxurious life and being the envy of everyone in town. Although the style of writing is chaotic, the story gives a fairly accurate and humorous account of Icelandic society and how it developed from roughly 1930 to 1970.  more

This week visit the ASÍ Art Museum for a retrospective exhibition of the works of Gylfi Gíslason. Gíslason, who was best known for his drawings, was also a designer, teacher, curator, art critic and a producer of radio and television programs. The exhibition includes samples of his drawings, illustrations and three-dimensional artwork.  more