Accessories shop WOS is branching out towards the art community with a pop-up shop at Bonniers Konsthall.

Words Ida Therén

Jenny Widing and Ulrika Stöllman founded WOS with a vision and a goal to be a platform for young contemporary design. The team has now been in the fashion industry for over a decade. Even though they are not designers themselves, they have always been interested in discovering new talented accessory designers and making them available for others and to get more attention. “We believe in new talents and work hard for them to be the future stars,“ they say.

They started selling jewellery in 2012. Since then, they have initiated collaborations with 90 different designers that make original crafts by hand. They work with Swedish art schools and they have become a great platform for the next generation of designers. So why did they focus on accessories and jewellery?

“It completes a persons personal style. Everyone has different tastes when it comes to accessories and jewellery and that special taste makes you stand out from the rest of the crowd,” they explain.

For Jenny, it was always a given to work with some kind of design. She started working at H&M when she was 16, and has always loved with beauty and different statement pieces. Ulrika started off in the restaurant business, owning a café and later she opened a clothing store, working with the same concept as WOS – young and new design. After a while they wanted to open a store together and got a place at Hornsgatan, where they decided to concentrate on their favorite items – accessories.

While they ponder opening up a second location in addition to their Södermalm shop – hopefully in Berlin – at the moment they are providing the finishing touches to their pop-up store at art museum Bonniers Konsthall. They have temporarily taken over the museum shop with a selection of jewellery and design made especially for Bonniers Konsthall. The program coordinator Sara Källsner at the museum tells us more about the idea behind it. “We were curious about WOS because they act at the heart of a young and up-and-coming design scene and in many ways are at the forefront of their field.”

There are parallels to the way Bonniers Konsthall works in the art field, she explains, as they often present new art and artists before they are known to a wider audience.

Bonniers Konsthall thinks the pop-up store is a good way to create an innovative shop, but also to stay connected with what is going on within different fields, such as design in this case.

“In the WOS collection there is also a nice balance between the classical and the avant-garde, so you can always find something you like that’s quite unique,” says Källsner.

WOS at Bonnier

Konsthall will be open until the end of July.