Let me introduce
These online articles have gained many new readers – some of you because you read the print bookazine HÅNDVÆRK, others, perhaps because you follow me on Instagram or have done an online search for knowledge about crafts and design.
I welcome every single one of you!
January 2026
Let me introduce my personal and professional background, based on many years of work – initially as a craft maker, later as a fashion designer – and my motivation for publishing about crafts, design, architecture, food and fashion.
In photos and text, I cover the people practising these occupations and the resources involved in their processes – including both human resources and what we used to call materials.
My motivation has three key components, which mutually reinforce each other:
- I am convinced that that the nearest shortcut to a sustainable and durable practice goes through knowledge of and respect for materials and craftsmanship – whether in a professional practice (design, crafts or manufacturing) or in how we go about our daily lives and consumption.
- My senses love everything that has been shaped and refined by human hands.
- And I have a fundamental need to express myself aesthetically. This need has been a key condition since my youth – in fact, ever since my childhood. In my working life, I have pursued this urge in various ways. Today, my outlet is to design, write and take the photographs for the HÅNDVÆRK bookazine.
My name is Rigetta Klint. I am a mother, grandmother, wife and friend.
I have lived in Frederiksberg since 2016, when I returned to Denmark after 10 years in Sweden.
From 2016 to 2019, when the first HÅNDVÆRK bookazine came out, I worked as a freelance writer and photographer and was involved in the creation of a couple of cookery books. In 2018, I published a book about crafts. This fuelled my desire to continue along this same path – and ultimately led to the launch of the bookazine.
During my last two years in Stockholm, was the brand manager of a commercial jewellery and lifestyle firm. In addition to my strategic work, I took the company’s campaign photographs.
Before then, from 2008 to 2013, I launched the online platform SLOWfashionhouse.com, which was both a web shop and a brand building tool. The platform serviced small design brands and craft makers across the lifestyle spectrum and was aimed at an international audience.
My own brand statement at the time was:
SLOW is an economic necessity – for individuals and society alike.
We need to understand that overconsumption is meaningless – and unsustainable, both for us and for the planet we all share. We simply have to get used to buying fewer but higher-quality products that are consumed at a slower pace.
SLOW is about a strong connection between designer and manufacturer, between manufacturer and product, between product and consumer.
SLOW is a glimpse of a new and more sustainable world. It is a possibility for running a business in a more responsible manner that respects manufacturers, environment and consumers as equally important elements.
This means that we will only produce, sell and buy things that we cannot do without and which add aesthetic and functional value to the world. Not things that are just a fleeting flirt.
SLOW represents responsibility in the choices you make as a designer, manufacturer or consumer.
SLOW products are tomorrow’s heirloom.
Imitating the physical world, the first version of SLOWFASHIONhouse graphically mimicked a real-life department store, complete with display windows and different departments.
SLOWFASHIONhouse 2.0 was an online magazine with one new issue a month, where the featured products could be put directly into the basket with a single click.
Both versions were accompanied by PR efforts, where I styled and photographed our product selection in images that the printed press embraced with open arms.
Before moving to Stockholm, in 2006, I had a shop and studio on Niels Hemmingsens Gade in central Copenhagen, founded in 2000.
From here I sold my two annual collections, which were produced in Latvia and Poland.
During this time, together with an English and Canadian designer and collaborator, I was one of the first in the world to put the concept of Slow Fashion into words. In our definition, the concept was closely aligned with the Slow Food movement’s principles of ‘good, clean and fair’.
Naturally, I had a signature style – as did she. Slow Fashion is not itself a style but a commitment to quality throughout all the links of the chain.
The contemporary term is ‘sustainability’. During the early 2000s, it was a controversial issue.
In a talk with my PR agency in 2002, I asked them to place equal emphasis on design and style, on the one hand, and on quality and production conditions, on the other. They told me this would never gain any traction with the press – and that it also did not match what the consumers wanted. Consumers, they explained, wanted frictionless luxury, and the press wanted to know what celebrities were going to wear my designs on the red carpet.
Dreams are the stuff of fashion. Today, fortunately, many people are having a different kind of dreams.
From 1994 to 2000, in collaboration with the father of my children, I ran the shop Klint og Frydendahl in Copenhagen: a concept with equal emphasis on furniture, interior design objects and clothing.
I was involved in everything from buying, styling and photographing to the design and production of clothes.
My goal was to keep the production as local as possible. I established a collaboration with a knitting firm in Copenhagen – a quantum leap for me, as this was my first real external production but also because the knitting machines provided so many possibilities.
Factory tailoring was a bigger challenge. It was difficult to find a firm that was able and willing to produce more than one piece of high-quality clothing at a time.
As a result, I sometimes had to pitch in at the sewing machine.
In 1998, I found a tailoring firm in Riga, Latvia. Until then, this firm had only produced clothing to measure for upper-class clients in Riga, and the scale they could handle was perfect for my business.
Communication with the firm was handled by a Danish woman who lived in Riga at the time. She spoke Russian and knew the manager personally.
During the year leading up to this partnership, I had also hired a pattern maker, who had systematized my size charts and organized the patterns so they could be read by a production firm. She was a huge help in the task of product development, which I had handled on my own until then.
My initial years in the industry
Going even further back in time, here is a quick tour of my preceding years, in chronological order:
I was born in a small town in the north-west of Funen in 1963. Knitting and sewing have been a key activity in my family for generations.
My mother sewed clothes based on fashion patterns from the German firm Burda. She was a precise and accomplished seamstress, and the results were beautiful. My grandmother was a master of cable knitting with perfection in every stitch.
In other words, I grew up with textile crafts as part of everyday life and soon learnt how to thread a sewing machine and cast on.
No one in my family or among their friends had any relation to the fields of art or design. But I found my own way:
At 16, I joined a collective shop in Odense, where I sold applique waistcoats and patchwork items.
At 19, I opened my first shop, also in Odense. The sewing machine stood in the middle of the room, and in the mornings and evenings, I dyed all my own textiles in my flat.
My shop window was an excellent showcase. Every week, I created a new installation that interested people stopped by to see; often, they also came into the shop to buy something.
Many years ago, now, I attended a talk with the Dutch designer Piet Hein Eek. He trained at the academy in Eindhoven, and you all know him for his fabulous tables.
In the talk, he said that the basis of his success as a furniture designer – and the reason why he could afford to start up his first company – was that he came up with a concept of upcycling virtually worthless materials by investing hours and hours of work into them and selling the resulting products at high prices.
During my early years in the business, this was my approach too.
In 1987, at the age of 24, I held my first fashion show and launched my first coherent collection.
The show was an immersive theatrical performance at the art centre Kunsthallen Brandts Klædefabrik in Odense, where I presented in a large space without pillars.
Since then, I have held many shows – in Odense, Aarhus, Copenhagen and Stockholm – and worked with skilful and dedicated professionals.
In 1989, I had my first presentation of a collection in Copenhagen – in Ole and Monika Paustian’s new furniture store, housed in a building designed by Jørgen Utzon and located in Copenhagen’s Nordhavn (North Harbour) district.
After that, I moved to Copenhagen, where I founded my own design firm with sales through events and multi-brand shops and also worked as a designer on an integration project, until 1994, when my then husband and I opened Klint og Frydendahl.
I owe the fashion and textile business everything. This is where I learnt about processes, trained the skill of building a collection and learnt to examine an idea from multiple vantage points.
I am thankful to everyone who bought the clothes I made. I often run into some of you in real life, and you tell me that you still enjoy wearing it – or that children and grandchildren clamouring for it. I also regularly see my designs on resale platforms.
I am so grateful that I was in the industry at a time when it was still possible to buy loden from Austria, linen from Belgium and tweed from Scotland.
I am full of admiration for everyone who is carrying on the work of finding new, defensible approaches in a time that is calling for even more consideration than I put into my Slow Fashion mantra – fashion is a truly wonderful mode of expression.
Der er kommet mange nye læsere til – en del af jer har fundet vej, fordi I læser printbookazinet HÅNDVÆRK, andre fordi I følger mig på Instagram eller har søgt efter viden om håndværk, kunsthåndværk og design på nettet.
Velkommen til hver og en!
Lad mig introducere mine personlige og faglige forudsætninger tilvejebragt gennem mange års arbejde – først som kunsthåndværker, siden som designer i modebranchen – og min motivation for at publicere om håndværk, kunsthåndværk, design, arkitektur, mad og mode.
Jeg fotograferer og skriver om de mennesker, der beskæftiger sig med disse fag, og om de ressourcer, der medgår i processerne – hvad enten ressourcerne er af menneskelig karakter eller det, vi plejede at kalde materialer.
Jeg hedder Rigetta Klint. Jeg er mor, mormor, hustru og veninde.
Jeg bor på Frederiksberg – det har jeg gjort siden 2016, hvor jeg vendte tilbage til Danmark efter 10 år i Sverige.
Min motivation er tredelt – og delene krydsbefrugter hinanden:
- Jeg er overbevist om, at den nærmeste genvej til en bæredygtig og langtidsholdbar praksis går gennem kendskab til og respekt for materialer og håndværksfærdigheder – uanset om praksis er professionel (som designer, håndværker eller fabrikant) eller handler om, hvordan vi indretter vores liv og forbrug.
- Mine sanser elsker alt, som er berørt af menneskehånd.
- Og jeg har et grundlæggende behov for at udtrykke mig æstetisk – et behov, som har været en grundforudsætning siden jeg var ganske ung, ja faktisk siden jeg var lille, og som jeg i alle mine erhvervsaktive år har levet ud på forskellig vis, nu gennem at designe, fotografere og skrive HÅNDVÆRK bookazine.
Fra 2016 til 2019, hvor det første HÅNDVÆRK bookazine udkom, arbejdede jeg freelance som skribent og fotograf, og jeg var involveret i et par kogebøger. I 2018 udgav jeg en bog om håndværk (og kunsthåndværk), bogen gav mig lyst til at arbejde videre med emnet, ud af det fødtes bookazinet.
De sidste to år i Stockholm arbejdede jeg som brand manager i en kommerciel smykke- og livsstilsvirksomhed. Foruden mit strategiske arbejde fotograferede jeg vikrsomhedens kampagnebilleder.
Inden da, fra 2008 til 2013, stod jeg bag platformen SLOWfashionhouse.com – en onlineplatform, som var både netbutik og brandbuildingsværktøj. Platformen servicerede mindre designbrands og kunsthåndværkere i hele livsstilsspektret og rettede sig mod et internationalt publikum.
Mit brand statement dengang lød:
SLOW er en økonomisk nødvendighed – både for den enkelte og for samfundet.
Vi må forstå, at overforbrug er meningsløst. Hverken vi eller vores fælles jord kan holde til det. Vi må helt enkelt vænne os til at købe færre, men bedre højkvalitetsprodukter, som forbruges langsommere.
SLOW handler om en stærk forbindelse mellem designer og producent, mellem producent og produkt og mellem produkt og forbruger.
SLOW er et glimt af en ny verden, der er mere bæredygtig. Det er en mulighed for at drive forretning på en mere ansvarlig måde, hvor man respekterer producenter, miljøet og forbrugerne som ligeværdige komponenter.
Det betyder, at vi kun vil producere, sælge og købe ting, som vi ikke kan undvære, og som tilfører verden en værdi – æstetisk og funktionelt. Ikke ting, som bare er en flygtig flirt.
SLOW repræsenterer ansvarlighed i de valg, du træffer som designer, producent og forbruger.
Et SLOW produkt er morgendagens arvegods.
SLOWFASHIONhouse imiterede den fysiske verden – første version var grafisk iscenesat som et fysisk varehus med udstillingsvinduer og afdelinger.
SLOWFASHIONhouse 2.0 var et online bladremagasin, som udkom en gang om måneden, hvor de viste produkter kunne klikkes direkte i varekurven.
Begge versioner blev ledsaget af et pressearbejde, hvor jeg stylede og fotograferede vores produktsortiment i billeder, som den trykte presse tog imod med åbne arme.
Inden jeg i 2006 flyttede til Stockholm, havde jeg fra 2000 butik og atelier i Niels Hemmingsens Gade i København.
Herfra solgte jeg mine to årlige tøjkollektioner, som jeg fik produceret i Letland og Polen.
Jeg var i den periode – sammen med en engelsk/canadisk designer og samarbejdspartner – blandt de første i verden til at italesætte begrebet Slow Fashion. I definitionen lænede vi os op ad Slow Food-bevægelsens motto: “good, clean and fair”.
Jeg havde naturligvis en stil, som var min signatur – det havde hun også. Slow Fashion i sig selv er ikke en stil, men en holdning til kvalitet i alle kædens led.
Nu hedder det bæredygtighed. I begyndelsen af 00’erne var det kontroversielt.
I en samtale med mit PR-bureau i 2002, hvor jeg bad dem om at lægge ligeligt vægt på design og stil og på kvalitet og produktionsvilkår, blev jeg belært om, at det på ingen måde var, hvad pressen ville interessere sig for – eller hvad forbrugerne drømte om. Forbrugerne ville have gnidningsløs luksus, og pressen ville vide, hvilke kendte mennesker der sås i mit tøj på den røde løber.
Drømme er det stof, mode er gjort af. Nu er der heldigvis mange, som drømmer andre drømme.
Fra 1994 til 2000 drev jeg sammen med mine børns far butikken Klint og Frydendahl i København:
Et koncept med ligeligt fokus på møbler, indretningsartikler og beklædning.
Jeg var involveret i alt fra indkøb, styling af butikken, fotogafering og design og produktion af tøj
Mit ønske var at holde produktionen så lokalt som muligt. Jeg indledte et samarbejde med et strikkeri i København – et kvantespring, fordi det var min første egentlige eksterne produktion, men også fordi strikmaskinerne gav så mange muligheder.
Konfektionen gav større udfordringer – det var vanskeligt at finde nogen, som kunne og ville producere mere end et stykke ad gangen i høj kvalitet.
Det betød, at jeg selv gav et nap med ved symaskinen, når det var nødvendigt.
I 1998 fik jeg kontakt med et skrædderi i Riga, Letland. Skrædderiet, som frem til da kun havde syet efter mål til byens overklasse, passede i dimensioneringen til min virksomhed.
Med til historien hører, at kontakten blev håndteret af en dansk kvinde, som på det tidspunkt boede i Riga – hun talte russisk og kendte lederen.
Jeg havde i året op til da fået tilknyttet en mønsterkonstruktør. Hun havde sat system i mine størrelsesspring og organiseret mønstrene, så de kunne læses af en produktionsvirksomhed, og var en kæmpe hjælp i produktudviklingen, som jeg hidtil havde været ene om.
Mine første år i branchen
Nu er vi langt tilbage – de forudgående år tager vi i hurtigt tempo og i kronologisk orden:
Jeg er født i en lille by på Nordvestfyn i 1963. I min familie har man i generationer, som den mest naturlige ting i verden, syet og strikket.
Min mor syede modetøj efter tyske Burda-mønstre – akkurat og flot. Min mormor strikkede snoninger, så ingen maske lå forkert.
Håndarbejde lå med andre ord i kortene, og jeg lærte tidligt, hvordan man tråder en symaskine og slår masker op.
Derimod var der ingen i familien eller i familiens omgangskreds, som havde tilknytning til kunst- eller designbranchen. Men jeg fandt min egen vej:
Som 16-årig blev jeg medlem af et butikskollektiv i Odense, hvortil jeg leverede applikerede veste og patchworkkreationer.
Som 19-årig åbnede jeg min første egen butik – ligeledes i Odense. Her var symaskinen placeret midt i lokalet, og de tekstiler, jeg syede af, farvede jeg i min lejlighed morgen eller aften.
Mit vindue i forretningen var et godt udstillingsvindue. Hver uge skabte jeg en ny installation, som interesserede kom forbi for at betragte – ikke sjældent hændte det, at de kom ind for at købe.
Jeg var for efterhånden mange år siden til en forelæsning med den hollandske designer Piet Hein Eek – han er fra akademiet i Eindhoven. I kender ham alle for hans helt mageløse borde.
Han sagde, at grundlaget for hans møbelsucces – og det, som gjorde, at han havde haft råd til at etablere sin virksomhed i sin tid – var, at han opfandt et koncept, hvor han anvendte næsten værdiløse materialer, som han upcyclede ved at lægge mange timers arbejde i dem, hvorefter han kunne sælge møblerne dyrt.
I mine første år var det præcis det samme, jeg gjorde.
I 1987, da jeg var 24 år gammel, holdt jeg mit første modeshow og lancerede min første sammenhængende kollektion.
Showet var et stykke totalteater i Kunsthallen Brandts Klædefabrik i Odense, hvor jeg fik ”det søjlefrie rum” stillet til rådighed.
Jeg har siden holdt mange shows både i Odense, Århus København og Stockholm, og i den sammenhæng samarbejdet med virkelig dygtige og professionelle mennesker – ingen nævnt, ingen glemt.
I 1989 viste jeg første gang min kollektion i København hos Ole og Monika Paustian i deres nye møbelhus, tegnet af Jørgen Utzon og placeret i Københavns Nordhavn.
Derefter flyttede jeg til København og nåede både at have min egen designvirksomhed med afsætning på events og gennem multibrand-shops, og at være ansat som designer på et integrationsprojekt, inden vi i 1994 åbnede Klint og Frydendahl.
Jeg skylder mode- og tekstilbranchen alt. Det er her, jeg har lært om processer, det er her, jeg har trænet kollektionsopbygning, og det er her, jeg har lært at belyse en idé fra mange sider.
Tak til I, som dengang købte mit tøj. Jeg møder ofte nogle af jer ude i den virkelige verden, hvor I fortæller mig, at I stadig har glæde af tøjet – eller at børn og børnebørn nu slås om brugsrettighederne og jeg ser det leve på gensalgsplatformene.
Jeg er så glad for at have været med i branchen mens det stadig var muligt at købe loden fra Østrig, hør fra Belgien og tweed fra Skotland.
Jeg er fuld af beundring for jer, som har taget stafetten og arbejder med at finde nye, forsvarlige modeller i en tid som kalder på endnu mere omtanke end mit Slow Fashion dogme inkluderede – mode er en vidunderlig udtryksform.
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