Last year Teurn Studios—the cool, under the radar Swedish brand—succumbed to the retail apocalypse. “What we can say is that we had good sales, we had a lot of customers… but we couldn’t find backing, and we sold to some major American accounts that did not pay us. And then it was impossible,” explained founder Anna Teurnell on a Zoom. “A startup company can’t deal with no payments.”
Resort marks a new start for the brand, which has received funding from Upsilon Investment, and now has a full-time CEO, Cicki Ovansjö, an industry veteran who has previously worked with Teurnell. The new collection is of a piece with all that came before; Teurn is still unmistakably Teurn and the designer’s knack for making small adjustments to more-than-basic pieces that yield maximum results remains flawless.
This season there are collars on crisp cotton shirts and a cavalry twill coat that can be worn standing or folded down. Shorts extend below the knee, and suiting is closer to the body; a blazer is cut to emphasize the waist. Somehow Teurnell, who is a big fan of Ralph Lauren, managed to create a fringed black leather jacket that doesn’t look like it was pulled from a cowboy’s closet. Softer without being frilly, is a midi-length pleated skirt and a wonderful ivory cape top with, as the designer noted, “a little seam under the arm so it doesn’t move around.”
Teurnell has a way with accessories and is as interested in putting looks together as she is in making garments. “We add things to make it more fun and more personal and feminine, of course,” she remarked. The designer has a feeling for a single diamanté earring to add some oomph to a total look. She used fringe sparingly on a neat belt and let it swing on soft city bags. In need of a good computer bag herself, Teurnell designer revisited the ’80s standard-issue attaché case, and, inspired by the gym shoes she used to wear, developed suede slip-ons in flat and kitten-heeled versions that read like a confident step in the right direction.
