"The surfboard, that's where everything started from for Stockholm Surfboard Club: the craftsmanship and the history of making surfboards," says Manne Haglund Glad, the co-founder and creative director of Stockholm Surfboard Club.
Glad has been a part of Stockholm's fledgling surf scene from before the days you'd find huge crowds showing up at Torö Stenstrand, a popular surf spot.
However, he's only recently created its unofficial surfing club, having launched the multi-faceted project in 2019.
Sitting somewhere in the grey area between being a surfboard company and a clothing brand, Glad is hesitant to call the project a fashion label — "The easy way [to explain it] would be that it's my life, but that's also a bit sad," says the creative director when I push him for a definition of what Stockholm Surfboard Club is. But regardless of how it identifies itself, the Swedish company is making waves for its clothing designs.
Bringing together a mix of inspirations, from vintage surfboard graphics, album covers and merch tees, to unintentionally stylish folk Glad walks past in the park, the brand has been inventing its own style of surf wear.
Its wide-ranging selection goes beyond what you would expect from your typical surfboard label — or a Scandinavian fashion brand.
"When people think about Scandinavian design, it's clean and minimalistic. We've not made a tactical choice to go against that, it just happened naturally," says Glad. "I surprise myself sometimes when I'm like, 'Whoa, there's a lot of color in this collection.' But I'm drawn to it and I notice that I like it. It makes things fun and weird."
For Stockholm Surfboard Club, fun comes in the form of uber-kitsch graphics with an alien riding a dolphin or full suits with panels of contrasting fabrics. The brand's will to experiment takes it everywhere from borderline psychedelia to unconventional tailoring, which more often than not has a 70s-inspired approach.
But amongst all of that, you'll find a host of logo-embellished staples and vintage workwear-inspired pieces for good measure, as well as some hand-crafted surfboards made by Glad.
The Stockholm native was making boards way before he designed any clothes, something he taught himself to do through a long process of trial and error. Having inherited an appreciation for hand-made craftsmanship from his carpenter father, it wasn't long after Glad stepped on his first board that he started to experiment with creating his own.
"For people who surf, [what board you get] depends on what you want to get from surfing. If you want performance, there are boards that really maximize your ability. But when you're just free surfing, it's nicer to find a flow and find your rhythm, and I try to make boards that make you find your own style," says Glad. "I try to make some real high-performance boards as well, but I'm more in the alternative spectrum in terms of all that."
Inspired to surf by his older brother and his friends, who picked it up as a hobby after traveling for downhill skate competitions, Glad quickly got hooked. This led to him traveling the world to surf, competing in competitions, opening a workshop with friends where he built surfboards, and chatting away with Jonny Johansson, co-founder and creative director of Acne Studios, about their joint love of surfing.
From that chance encounter, he eventually became part of the design team at Acne and met Stockholm Surfboard Club's co-owner Anton Edberg. "Without my years at Acne Studios, Stockholm Surfboard Club would probably become more surf or street," says Glad. "That experience helped me to push this project further."
He considers the first clothing releases more as merch for the surfboards he creates, but the education granted by the design studio at Acne Studios equipped him with a working knowledge of fashion to experiment with different techniques. Today, Stockholm Surfboard Club's clothing is crafted with such skill that calling it merch is doing it a disservice.
While the city might not be famous for the waves it catches in the Nordic Sea, Stockholm's surfboard scene's being put on the map thanks to Glad's elevated surfer-wear.
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