Medium Norn Cushion by Stine Linnemann

Danish textile designer Stine Linnemann was born in 1985 in Aarhus. She completed her Bachelor of Arts in Textiles at the Royal Danish Art Academy in 2010, before moving to London, where she graduated with a Master’s degree in Woven Textiles from the Royal College of Art in 2013. Linnemann interned with Louis Vuitton menswear and Paul Smith and gained experience in Como, Italy working with a silk jacquard weaving mill. Linnemann first established her eponymous studio in London in 2011 when she was commissioned for a hand-weaving project by Alexander McQueen. Several years later, in 2014, she returned to her home country and relocated her studio to the industrial area in the northeast of Copenhagen.

Linnemann’s textile designs have found applications in the fashion world, interior design, home textiles, fiber artworks and wall-hangings, and in furniture design in collaborations with brands like Bureau de Change. One standout piece was a participative art project in collaboration with fashion designer Trine Lindegaard for the Nordvest Festival in 2017; the two collaborators created a giant transportable loom, which they set up in various locations around Copenhagen and invited the public to join them in weaving a massive rag-rug made from textile remnants. The rug has since been donated to a church in Copenhagen where it is on permanent display. Linnemann’s diverse practice means that on the same day one of her creations might be walking the runway on a supermodel, while the designer herself works on a creative workshop with homeless people: she says, “for me, the whole point of designing is to share it.” The young designer’s talent has been recognized by the Deutsche Bank Award and Danish Design Award, both of which she was short-listed for, and she has also been the recipient of a working grant from the Danish Arts Foundation.

In 2016, Linnemann established her own sustainable luxury lifestyle brand, named simply Linnemann. A long-running champion of fair trade and worker- and eco-friendly practices, the fabric for Linnemann’s collection is handmade in collaboration with artisans in Sabhar, Ethiopia. The finished textiles are then shipped to Denmark where the brand’s home textiles, accessories, and gender-neutral loungewear range is produced in socially responsible and sustainable production facilities in Copenhagen. The Norn (2017) collection draws inspiration from Nordic mythology and combines a restrained Scandinavian functionalist subtlety with the hand-spun and woven Ethiopian fabric that gives the pieces their unusual softness and rich texture.