Swedish Style Mumbai! Multi-cultural, cross-creative mega event. Famous Studios, Mahalaxmi, Mumbai

4-5 June, 2019

Check out our Swedish Style Mumbai! website here! Read more below.

Back in the late 90s and early 00s, we, with our fashion and culture magazine Stockholm New, in collaboration with various partners, staged a number of large-scale, multi-creative mega events, ranging from two days to two weeks, featuring art, photography and design exhibitions, fashion shows, talks and seminars, live music and DJ:s, gourmet lunches and dinners, and much more — of course including copious amounts of partying — in Milano, Tokyo, New York, Paris and London. Modesty is a virtue but we must say that these events, especially Living in Sweden Milano 1998, Swedish Style Tokyo 1999 and 2001, and Stockholm New York, 2000, had massive impact for the brands of Stockholm and Sweden. The Foreign Minstry of Sweden was a partner in all these events. You can read and see more about these events here.

Those were great, extremely hectic and high-pace times. We move at a slower pace now. So who would have though that we would make a comeback almost 20 years later, in 2019, having discontinued our magazine already back in in 2002? This time, it was a different challenge, in Mumbai, or Maximum City as it’s sometimes called, the awesome Indian megalopolis, the subcontinent’s media, fashion anf finance capital, one of the world’s largest cities, approximately double the size of New York.

How this magnificent event came about, and how somehow we were able to pull it off, well that’s too long a story here. What I can assure is that I would not have taken on this challenge, commissioned by the Swedish Consulate General in Mumbai, in any other city, in any other country, than this crazy huge town in our beloved second homeland, incredible India.

You may well state that this event was produced and executed under extremely pressed and difficult circumstances, with a minimal budget and all kinds of complications and problems, including a minimal production time of six months, signing on for the venue just some week before opening. Still, it turned out awesome, with a huge led screen as center staged for exhibitions of art, photography, film and more. It was a guerilla style event, very dense and compact, of course also featuring design exhibitions, seminars, a fashion show, gourmet meals, DJ-ing, presentations by our partners Volvo, IKEA, H&M, Absolut Vodka and others, and much more.

I think it’s fair to say it was a huge succes, generating great publicity and attention. Unfortunately, Covid stopped the larger-scale sequel we had planned for the year after, 2020.

In 2019, Swedish consumer brands and companies were just starting out in a small way in India. Many were still most cautious about this gigantic market, except our traditional heavy industries that had long been established in India. IKEA, H&M and Volvo had all just recently established presence in Mumbai.

Today, the situation has dramatically changed. I think we may claim that our event contributed to this development. The number of Swedish companies and brands established in India has multiplied tenfold, from like 50 to 500. IKEA, Volvo, H&M and Spotify are all huge brands in Mumbai and India now.

You can check out much more images, press, partners and much more on our Swedish Style website.

So will we make yet another comeback one day? Well, it’s tough work, so hardly likely but never say never …