Hans Jansson: Jansson Hannson brand

Lecture notes from September 17, 2007

Hans Jansson is a former investment banker who hoped that somehow he will end up in fashion industry. And he did.

He travels to get inspired, he speaks Swedish with slight French accent and represents everything one can adapt to a frenchman - the attitude, the style, the decorousness, the class. He collects data, techniques and materials from his travels to Egipt, Asia, East and South; he claims that handicraftsmen (mostly women or girls) are happy if not exploited. They sew and do high class embroidery, they have the knowledge and the skills. He now has about 20 handicraftsmen who create the patterns with utopian flowers and embroider the cloth. Mostly they live in the societies where women don't work - women in these places have even hard to imagine going to the university. Hans Jansson admits that to communicate with these wonderful craftsmen one must study hard to learn how to deal with and understand them. These are people who are not influenced by consumer capitalism and fashion industry, they just do the handicraft without knowing how unique is that skill and product in Western capitalist system. Their conscience is clean, they are the opposites to the Western trend-follower.

It's like the 'glamorous' world of fashion versus real mix of cultures through fashion. The key to success is not the invention of 'new'. He's talking about beautiful souls, the innocence, the untouched areas within fashion and how remarkable that seems! And when he said that many Swedish designers should change their style, attitude and action - the silence filled the space. Everyone shut up.

The he showed off some living fashion - hand-made exemplars of his designs on the girls from the class. The prices start with 40 Euro for T-shirts, the dresses start from 1000 Euro and go up until 3-4000 Euros.

He admits that even young girls work for him, for instance after their day at school, after studying couple of hours per day. He takes that into account when planning and receiving the orders from clients. I start to wonder - what is that actually? Is that really business or handicraft, or can it be both, in the same time making all the parties happy?

Even if all these nice pieces are produced by hand by beautiful souls then one former investment banker puts the most money into his pocket. Or does he?

He says that the best market for 'his' production is Southern Europe, Greece, Italy, Dubai and Japan. The price is what fixes the price. In Sweden he hardly sells, though it is possible to make a personal order. Japan here is the trendsetter, he claims. "In Japan, very young people, girls, buy very, very expensive designer clothes." He also says that he doesn't want any African or other recognizable ethnical symbols on his fabrics, but unique, non-existing flower figures. He points or creates like the non-existing ethnography, the new version of ethnography.

This guy has a bit wider perspective. Since 1985 he doesn't live in Sweden, which makes 22 years abroad... He has roots of Scandinavia, school of Paris and expression of Arabic. Fashion really can be on very simple proof of globalization.