Today we’d like to introduce you to Elin Johansson Antonelli.
Elin, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
Growing up is Sweden I have always had an interest in making my own clothes and bags, and dreamt of becoming a designer. I studied at a fashion design program in secondary school. While still in my last semester I went to New York, where I fell in love with the city, and just a week after graduating, I moved to Brooklyn. From there I continued to design collections on my own, moved for a semester to London to study at Central Saint Martins, then got my ASS and BFA at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, where I got a specialization degree in Knitwear.
After graduating I got the great opportunity to assist the sweater design team for the renowned brand Helmut Lang, and later worked as an associate Knitwear designer at Ralph Lauren for both Men’s and Women’s wear. Having only designed women’s wear in the past, I discovered my passion for menswear. However, I did not like the seasonality or temporal nature of this type of fashion, at the same time, I also began to dream about leaving the city. It was during this time my husband suggested while riding the subway to work one morning that I should start making men’s leather messenger bags. He said, “a well-made minimal messenger bag, for an affordable price doesn’t exist”.
This would also allow me to sell online and work from anywhere. That’s when I started some intense research and began experimenting with material and designs. We started basäder with nothing more than two bags and an idea on etsy. Sales took off, and nine months later, I left my job and moved the business into a beautiful studio in Williamsburg. Since then we have continued to grow, and four years ago we left Brooklyn for the quaint mill town Harrisville, NH.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
We are a small artisan bag company called basader. Our process is heavily driven by a mission to create lasting pieces and promote timeless design principles. All of our work is produced in our studio in Harrisville NH, where we laboriously cut, assemble and finish our pieces. Through experimenting with new techniques, materials and finishes – and even just wearing our own work – we’re continually improving upon our product offerings. My husband and I wanted to make high-quality, minimal and timeless designs for an affordable price. I take inspiration from Scandinavian temporary design and mix it will heritage fashion. My focus is simplification — we use the highest quality leather and hardware, but try to minimize the heaviness of the bag. Our customers will see rigid classic bags with clean lines. They will see a bag that is void of pretentious logos and branding where the beautiful finish of the leather and clean lines speaks its value.
Given everything that is going on in the world today, do you think the role of artists has changed? How do local, national or international events and issues affect your art?
Fashion moves faster with each coming year, and we’re consciously part of a new slow fashion movement, were we intentionally try to avoid trends. I want to create a bag that will last through a man’s/woman’s career and that will just get more beautiful with time. We would like our customers to one day pass their bag down through generations. And because of this, we promise to always care, clean and repair our products free of charge. Further, we think about the environment by using vegetable tanned leather from locally sourced American tanneries.
If we can persuade just a small fraction of consumers to buy “for life” – especially when confronted with a plethora of cheap disposable alternatives – we’re extremely happy. Conscious consumerism translates to offering a timeless aesthetic, sourcing local top-quality materials, and working on tight margins. Knowing we’ve supplied our customers with a lifetime item is a rewarding objective, and without the direct to consumer potential of the internet, the proof-of-concept would have been difficult to so quickly establish. If we were forced to rely on traditional retail channels, our bags would warrant exorbitant markup, essentially pricing out a majority of the people we hope to serve.
We hope to grow basäder enough to start seriously experimenting with non-traditional materials as well, and we’re exploring various leather alternatives that might resonate more with our intended audience. In the meantime, we’re building bags that are made to last indefinitely, using materials sourced locally in the US.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
We mostly sell through our website, but have started to sell at the SOWA market in Boston this summer and fall.
Contact Info:
- Address: 9 Mill Alley Road, Harrisville, NH 03450
- Website: basader.com
- Email: info@basader.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/basader/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Basader-184492391692070/
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