Louise Lynge has dreamt of becoming a designer since the age of 11 where she designed her first outfit as a birthday present for a girlfriend. She has since experienced great success with her brand Nuuk Couture and her new accessory brand, simply called Louise Lynge, is well underway.
My Greenlandic heritage
It has always been important to Louise to show her Greenlandic heritance in her designs, and her Nuuk Couture collections have a clear thread to the traditional Greenlandic national dresses.
“I design to a Greenlandic audience. The styles have bright colours just like the houses here, the embroidery resemble the skin embroidery on our national dresses, and the sizes are made to fit a Greenlandic woman,” Louise says and explains: “Fashion has always been part of Inuit culture: we were the first to invent sunglasses to prevent snow-blindness. Danes are proud of the ‘Made in Denmark’ tag, and my wish is that we Greenlanders can become equally proud of a ‘Made in Greenland’ tag.”
Her decision proved extremely popular, and the brand grew quickly from its humble beginnings in 2011 where she sewed every dress herself to become a professional fashion brand that is being sold in several shops as well as online today. In 2020, Louise was ready to start a brand under her own name, and the sustainable accessory brand, Louise Lynge, was born.
A tree for a bag
The brand Louise Lynge produces handbags from vegan leather and has a ‘no waste’ policy. This means that all cuts from making the bags are being made into other styles such as hairbands, wallets, or keychains.
“The manufacturer will call me and say, ‘I have 30 small triangles, what can I make from these’ and I come up with something,” Louise says and explains that this also sparks her creativity and forces her to think about design in new ways so that all of the material is used.
The sustainable element is very important to her: “We have also developed the concept ‘a tree for a bag’, which means that we plant trees that can absorb the same amount CO2 in kilos that we emit in our production. We plant the trees all over the world, for instance in the Brazilian rainforest. Some people have asked me why not here in Greenland, but we’re all connected on this planet, and the health of the rainforest affects us in this part of the world as well,” says Louise.
The bags are only produced once sold. This means that there is no stock as everything is made to order. It’s not fast fashion, and some customers may have to wait a bit for their bag to arrive, but this way there is no waste: some bag designs end up never being produced if there is no demand, others may only be produced only once.
Even though Louise wants her brand to grow and expand beyond the Greenlandic borders, she also wants to do this in a sustainable way: “My brand will no doubt grow, and I have big plans, but it will not be at the expense of the environment. I want to grow in a calm and conscious way”, Louise finishes.
