Mindful Chic

A profile of new Swedish-American designer Johanna Hofring

By Mary Gehlhar

With the difficult financing and manufacturing challenges that face new fashion designers, it takes true passion to take on the extra challenge of sustainability.

Designer Johanna Hofring has dedicated herself to creating a new organic and sweatshop-free line of sexy, body conscious women’s wear that incorporates organic materials, natural dyes, and traditional handcraft and crochet details. With cozy knitted sweaters, sexy jersey jumpsuits, extra long leggings

(perfect for bunching over your stilettos) and soft, strapless evening dresses, the collection offers a modern mix of comfort and elegance that will take you from lunch at Barney’s to full lotus at yoga. The tactile fabrics include hemp, grown without toxic pesticides and fertilizers, soft wool jersey from biodynamic sheep farms where the sheep are fed organic food, handspun angora yarn from her neighbor in Sweden and linen jersey from Germany.

Hofring, who splits her time between the city of New York and the woods of her native Sweden, still has difficulty finding some organic and fair trade certified, sweatshop-free materials such as thread, zippers and other notions. But she is dedicated and excited to expand the line. “It just feels like the natural course things have to take if we want to stay around on our planet. When I came to the decision of doing a whole organic and sweatshop-free collection, nothing has ever felt more important to me. I'm so inspired, motivated and focused.? Look for the Johanna Hofring Fall collection in boutiques nationwide. For more information visit www.johannahofring.com.


Mary Gehlhar is the Fashion Director of Gen Art, a national non-profit dedicated to showcasing and supporting emerging talent in film, fashion, visual art and music.

in the same vein:

Alabama's clothes are made from hand-dyed, hand-stitched, recycled vintage jersey fabric, so they will never fade or shrink, and the super-strong quilting stitches used to sew the clothes together insure that the garments won't fall apart on you.

Loyalty Clothing Company

builds all its garments from recycled clothes, including the individually-designed "swoodies" (the prefect marriage of sweater and hoodie). Learn more in sass magazine's interview with Loyalty bigwig Daniel Blue.