Sara Sofie Tallaksen on making Norwegian traditions modern

“There is a lot of frustration in going to fashion school, but also a lot of magic.”

Through her designs, Tallakse wanted to look back at Mandal, the Christian village in the south of Norway where she was raised, to explore her history and heritage. “A lot of us have the same experience growing up: we want to run away from everything we once experienced and then we start to miss it,” she says. To create a connection with her home and childhood, she introduced traditional Norwegian knitting styles like kofte and mariusgenser, reminiscent of the security and well-established values of her upbringing. The challenge was to represent the journey we go through in life, full of changes and experiences, to become adults. By moulding latex onto the body and repositioning the knitwear’s clasps, the garments balanced tradition and innovation, making them look new but still recognisable.

The global COVID-19 pandemic made her question why she was doing the collection. In an attempt to make sense of her work, she collected band t-shirts and t-shirts of Barbie and Disney princesses to upcycle them, and put them together in feminine patchwork dresses. “Everyone was decluttering their closets because they had nothing else to do and nowhere to go,” she says. “I was running around Oslo with my mask on gathering others’ pre-loved clothes. Recycling won’t solve every problem we have in this world but creating a project in which my waste isn’t that big can help.”

“There were so many important things going on with the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, and I was there crying over a collection.”

Lockdown made Sara Sofie realise what fashion really means to her and relativise what she felt during the creation of her collection. “There were so many important things going on with the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, and I was there crying over a collection,” she says. “Although at the same time we need fashion to conceptualise the feelings that we have.” However, for her, fashion can do even more than that: it can make a difference. “We need really good fashion designers to change the textile industry,” she says.

But it wasn’t always as straight-forward. During her life as a student, she wondered many times why she was so invested in fashion. “It’s just clothes,” she thought, unable to see the real value of it all. Then, she realised that fashion is a great vehicle for self expression. “Fashion school becomes your life, and everything gets very big and emotional, but it has made me stronger,” she adds. “What I liked the most was that you can go very deep in yourself and reflect on what you want to do.” And for anyone thinking of following the same path, she puts it out very clearly: “it is going to be very tough, but it is going to be very fun as well.”

After graduation, not having a runway show to present her collection made her sad, but she also thinks that there were more important issues to think about. Her university, however, set up an online exhibition for the whole design department as a platform for students to share images of their work. Tallekse decided not to participate. “I was a bit over everything, to be honest,” she says. “I have all the time in the world to show this collection because it is not about trends, it goes beyond that. And I wasn’t completely ready to show my work when I finished it, but I am now.”

“A lot of the excitement of creating something is seeing it come to life, and clothes are so physical and tactile, that there’s something in seeing them in motion rather than in pictures. And I miss that.”

No matter how good the exhibition looked, Tallekse thinks more could’ve been done – she would’ve preferred a traditional runway show, streamed for a digital audience. “A fashion show is a completely different experience, a shot of a dress will never speak the same way as seeing a model moving around,” she says. “A lot of the excitement of creating something is seeing it come to life, and clothes are so physical and tactile, that there’s something in seeing them in motion rather than in pictures. And I miss that.”

Because of the uncertainty and environmental issues that worry her, she has a bittersweet feeling about life after graduation. “But fashion is never going to die,” she says. With an increasing interest in writing, she has decided to study journalism in Oslo, a career she wants to combine with her own brand’s projects in the future. For now, Tallekse believes working for someone else is going to benefit her more, and she can always work on her personal projects on the side. As she says: “I’m really proud of what I have done, but I still have so much to learn.”