Stora torget, drawn again

For our tenth year we wanted to make a garment about the place where it all started. The result is the Borås Shirt: a printed shirt designed together with Stockholm designer Agnes Liversedge, starting from a historic archive photo of Stora torget, the main square in Borås.

A new town

Borås was a new town for Agnes, and the work became a deep dive into a history that is both short and long.

It was a lot of fun to research a town that was new to me. Borås has both a short and a long history. The facades we see today have not been there for long, because fires and the textile industry changed so much. But many of the building frames have stood there since the knallar, the travelling traders, took on kings and governors.

Agnes Liversedge

Borås has been hit by several large town fires. Each time it was rebuilt, and over time it became the textile capital of Sweden. That stubbornness, the habit of building again, is what the print carries.

From archive photo to print

The archive photo of Stora torget, and Agnes's sketch of the same view.

I got stuck on an archive photo of how the square used to look, and on my morning walks through the town I realised that the architecture stays, but the life of the town changes.

Agnes Liversedge

Agnes redrew the square by hand and turned it into a pattern that runs over the whole shirt, front, back and sleeves. The aim was to keep the feeling of home and recognition while making the motif modern enough to wear today.

Look closer

I like that the print holds small everyday details. Look closely and you can see an old man with a walker crossing the square. But really it is not only about Borås. For me Stora torget became a symbol of what is Swedish and local.

Agnes Liversedge

The shirt is made in a limited edition as part of our tenth anniversary. To read our whole story, year by year, visit Ten years.

Limited edition
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