Scan Magazine | Design Profile | Pipol’s Bazaar
A bazaar of Scandinavian ethno glam Take a good dose of care and a sense of belonging, and add a combination of Scandinavian simplicity and ethnic spark. What you get is a bazaar of jewellery, fashion and interior items, bursting at the seams with warmth and a glamorous soul. Pipol’s Bazaar, as Scan Magazine discovered, is much more than the sum of its products. By Linnea Dunne | Photos: Pipol’s Bazaar
the done thing. Yet she was well-planned and calculated. “There are plenty of really talented creatives out there, but the thing that separates the wheat from the chaff is often that combination of an aptitude for form and business savvy,” says Fehrm. “In addition to the creative side of my work I can – and have to – spend all night over an Excel spreadsheet to get the financial side to work out or thinking about strategic ways to reach our customers. If you don’t reach your customers, it doesn’t matter how good your product is.”
“At times of upheaval, when things rupture, it opens your eyes to the fact that you can affect change, that change is possible,” says Pia Fehrm, founder of Pipol’s Bazaar. She had two small children and was newly separated when, ten years ago, she decided to leave her job as a business developer to start a design brand. Pipol’s Bazaar was in part a response to a gap in the market for a type of product she kept looking for but could not find, but also an outlet for a desire to work with colour and design. “My mother, who is now an artist, worked as a buyer and I grew up watching her work with colour swatches,” Fehrm recalls.
A feeling of belonging
That said, she describes her family as being of an academic tradition, where setting up a business was not exactly
The product, in the case of Pipol’s Bazaar, is described by her as Scandinavian ethnochic. “Us Scandinavians in general and Swedes in particular have quite a clean,
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strict look where we actually don’t want to differ too much from our neighbour. Being a Scandinavian brand of origin means adapting to this environment but also staying true to the real reason we as a brand exist and keeping that ethno feeling in the designs,” Fehrm explains. “We’ve got that ethno-glamorous element of working with patterns where there’s a clear North African or Asian streak, and if you take an otherwise very plain item there’ll be a detail that gives it that spark, that feel.” While Fehrm initially had her mind set on bags, the exact assortment in itself was always secondary to that feeling. “You buy something bigger than a product, a feeling of belonging,” she says. That feeling has since been extended to also envelop interior items and jewellery, but the connection to that original ethnoglamorous universe has remained intact. Think craft meets luxury, worn meets sparkly. Luxury, as the designer puts it, does not have to be expensive. From beaded headbands and gold earrings
