Based between Copenhagen and Paris, Aesther Ekme is a fashion label devoted to crafting leather goods defined by sculptural silhouettes and practical wearability.
[AD] Each bag in Aesther Ekme’s collection is timeless and understated — trend transcending designs which are equally ageless as they are eye-catching. Grounded by an acute sensitivity towards refined simplicity and functionality, Aesther Ekme pieces are designed to serve as wardrobe staples — the handbag you find yourself reaching for year after year because of how comfortable it is to carry and how well it harmonizes with every outfit. Compliments are always sure to follow.
In this article, I’m featuring two of my favorite pieces in the Aesther Ekme collection: the brand’s iconic Demi Lune and their most recently launched style, the Baguette. Each is crafted from buttery soft leather from one of the label’s seasonal colors. The bags shown in the images below are a part of the Fall Winter 21′ collection which included a beautiful mix of unique earth tones and energized oranges and yellows. To get to know Aesther Ekme better, I spoke with the brand’s founder, Stephane Park. I hope you enjoy our interview…
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Aesther Ekme – Fall Winter 21′ Favorites
Demi Lune – Shitake
Baguette – Black
This blogpost is written in collaboration with Aesther Ekme
Explore Aesther Ekme on Instagram & Online
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An Interview with Stephane Park
Aesther Ekme’s Founder & Creative Director
Q: Tell me more about the journey that’s led you to where you are today.
A: It all happened a little bit by chance. I originally grew up in São Paulo Brazil and then moved to New York when I was 18 to study and work in fashion. Eventually, life brought me to Copenhagen and my connection here has grown deeper one step after the next — studying at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, founding Aesther Ekme, and eventually starting a family here with my boyfriend. So it’s been a combination of life events that lead me from one place to another, bringing me to where I am today with the brand.
Interview continues below…
Q: Have you always had the intention to start your own label in fashion?
A: There’s an entrepreneurial spirit that runs in my family, and I always knew that I would have my own business. It never really felt like a question of ‘what if?’, but rather a matter of when and how. My parents are first generation immigrants who moved from Korea to Brazil, and I grew up around their factory and stores. So my exposure to the backstage of the fashion industry, and all the hard work it involves, was part of my upbringing — the challenges of having your own company, what it takes to create a product, all the unpolished and unglamorous parts of the business beyond the design process. Logistics, invoices, taxes, accounting, sales — there’s so much to consider, and you just have to do it. Thankfully, I can depend on my team now to do a great job managing these things, and I am much more focused on design and leading the brand creatively. But I’m still very involved in the day-to-day workings. It feels very natural to me.
Q: It sounds like your path has been very international, and I understand that Aesther Ekme also has roots in Paris? Tell me more about the connection there.
A: My design studio is here in Copenhagen, but sales, marketing, logistics, and production is in Paris. A few years after launching, I decided to move a portion of the company to Paris because I found that the industry there could offer the support I was looking for, and my team brings a great level of expertise to the brand. We also work with different kinds of manufacturing partners in Spain and Turkey as well.
Q: Do you feel like the diversity from the places you’ve lived has informed the aesthetic direction of Aesther Ekme? São Paulo, New York, Copenhagen, Paris — each are big cities but with very different cultures, architecture, and moods. Are there influences there you’ve woven into your designs and collections?
A: In the beginning when I started the company in Denmark, my first collection was very much based on straight lines and the lifestyle ideas here. Things have to make sense and be comfortable. They need to be practical and light fitting. In earlier times when I was in New York working for Alexander Wang, so many of the accessories we were doing had a lot of heavy hardware and signature detailing that, for me, labelled the wearer quite strongly. There are many bags out there that are so heavily branded, you almost see the bag before the woman. So I thought maybe a bag should truly be an accessory — something that is user oriented instead of acting as a billboard for a brand. This notion was the premise in the beginning — design focused on service and comfort. These aspects are still at the core of Aesther Ekme. But when I went to Paris, I think I unconsciously felt a little bit more allowed to go for the aesthetics. I began to realize that the smartest part of the design was not coming from my brain, but actually my hands. The collections became more sculptural as I worked more with my hands and body to create the pieces, and less of a thinking process.
Q: It sounds like a process that comes very intuitively to you. What is development like when working with your hands?
A: Yes, it is a very intuitive process. Instead of sketching a design, I’m more interested in playing with the materials and creating 3D mockups from the very beginning. It’s the process of having a material in my hands that starts generating inspiration on it’s own. It’s very sculptural in that sense, and very physical as well. I never sit down when I’m designing. I’m always on my feet. Always cutting, gluing, folding, hammering – I need to have the physical contact and experience. It really makes a difference when standing because working with leather needs energy between you and the material. It’s a very inspiring material, and it demands quite a lot of respect from you. But you can’t do just anything with leather either, and it will respond back to everything you do. In this way, my dialog with the material is very open. Finding the right shape comes from a feeling. I’ll model a form again and again until I’m happy. It’s just a feeling, in the same way the bag fits the body.
Q: Are the sculptural aspects of your designs informed by the body and fit as well?
A: Of course, I’m very body conscious in the way I think about the shape and the fit of a bag. I think because of my Brazilian heritage, I can talk about body consciousness in many different ways. It’s about the feeling of the bag on your body, like the way a dress is tailored. We fit each design on many different body types and heights, and make adjustments so that it can be comfortable to a range of many wearers. Nothing should be cumbersome or inconvenient to carry, and I look at the way it changes the posture or how the wearer carries themselves. It needs to feel good and natural — like wearing a perfectly cut t-shirt or well fitting underwear. The tailoring needs to be great, because the bags have a kind of naked design that’s raw but polished. There aren’t a lot of embellishments or visual noise to distract from the fit, form, or material.
Q: Your designs are definitely reduced yet distinguishable, and I think that the same can be said about Aesther Ekme’s logo and branding. What’s been the response to your bags’ barely-there three dot logo?
A: You know, you don’t necessarily need those extra elements like a bold logo or hardware to have a strong impact. So much can be expressed through shape and color. Since the beginning, the minimal branding was surprisingly well accepted. It’s almost like some people were a bit relieved that there wasn’t a large logo. I never had to explain it to anyone, and I think it was something that people were waiting for. The three dot logo is a little bit cryptic. It’s there, but it’s not really there. And the name is like this as well, Aesther Ekme. Ekme comes from the Persian language, a word for bag that doesn’t really exist any more. And I chose Aesther for several reasons. It’s a very classical name, but its phonetics and typography remind me of the word aesthetic. So in the end there’s this meaning of ‘classic bag’, which is the starting point of all of my designs.
Q: You mentioned color, and what it can do for a design. Tell me more about the role color plays in your collections, and how you decide on which colors you use.
A: I tend to think of color as an embellishment, and it’s the only one I really allow myself to be playful with. I constantly change the colors we use, all the time, but in very subtle ways. Because we have the chance to custom color our leathers, I’m very interested in working with colors that are just a little bit unusual or hard to describe. A tan that almost could be yellow, a brown with a tinge of red. I think these types of in-between colors bring freshness to the line, and allow me to tell a story through the seasons. Bags that have sold well for many years, like the Demi Lune or Sac, take on a new life each season as we adjust the colors. I love to see colors as a sort of musical harmony. There are high tones and base tones — together, it becomes a harmonious group.
Q: It’s great that you have the opportunity to custom color your leathers. How closely are you working with your suppliers, and what does your manufacturing process look like?
A: Yes, we work very closely with suppliers in Europe and Turkey, and we work only with the gold group of leathers. This means that the material is regulated in terms of how it’s produced and the way that the dyes and chemicals are processed afterwards or recycled. I’ve always thought of durability as a key aspect of sustainability, so of course we want to make bags that are high quality and durable over the years. We keep putting more and more investment behind each bag every season, so that our quality gets better as well. Of course leather has to be cared for in a certain way, but it should also withstand daily wear and weather and life. Parallel to that, we’re often looking into the other aspects of our production and supply chain to make improvements, setting long-term goals to walk towards to be a more clean and biodegradable brand. Then on the other side of sustainability, there is an aspect that’s not about the product itself, but about the people who I work with. I believe that we can support a lot of goodness by treating people well and paying them fairly. This is something that’s been important to me since the beginning.
Q: What are some of the gratifying aspects you’ve experienced since starting your brand?
A: I’ve built a really solid team that I’m lucky to depend on and get to think of as family. We operate so well together, and many have been there since the very beginning. It’s been great to see the interest in our designs has only grown, which can be very competitive for a contemporary brand since there’s a big push to be trend-focused. People seem to be looking at bags with the mindset that they could last longer than a single season, and that makes me happy.
