WE MEET ATP ATELIER

On divine inspiration in Puglia

The idea for both the brand and our product originates from Puglia. During a summer there, me and my co-founder Jonas Clason, realized there was a gap on the market for urban sandals and accessories. A piece that you wouldn't get rid of after the summer vacation, that you could just as well wear in the city. That you could dress up just as well as dress down. It developed into a kind of marriage between Scandinavian contemporary design and traditional Italian craftsmanship.

On the ATP philosophy of ‘materials first, design second’.

For us sustainability is not a trend - it’s the way we all need to work now. For our first collection we started with vegetable tanned vacchetta leather. This leather is not treated with any environmentally harmful chemicals but with natural tannins. This is great for the environment. The material is stiffer, meaning we cannot create any shape or form we want so we let the raw material guide us in the process rather than the other way around. I think this is a beautiful and much more long lasting design philosophy. Leather products, like ours, treated with natural vegetable tannins are biodegradable and can be easily discarded at the end of their natural life. Vegetable-tanned leather does not contain any toxic substances such as azo-dyes, nickel, PCP or chrome VI.

On her ATP Atelier team

To me, sustainability also extends to how you work with your team. We’ve always built teams on the basis of people’s different personalities - not like-mindedness. If you’re a diverse group of people, with different perspectives, you’ll be stronger in the long run. You’ll also have a bigger understanding of your customer base. I believe diversity is not only geographical, but based on culture, age and aesthetic. If you have a diverse team you’ll handle adversity way better.

On a day in the life

We are a small-scale tightly knit team, our design studio is in Stockholm and we work very closely with our suppliers in Tuscany. We only have two suppliers, one for bags and one for shoes, and we have a really long standing relationship. It’s very much a family affair. When designing we don’t focus on fast paced trends but rather on the ATP Atelier woman and at what stage she is in her life and what her needs are. We work a lot with the same lasts and updating our design and colour palette slightly from season to season to make sure we don’t create something short lived but something that truly will stand the test of time.

On the brand muse

When we started the brand we thought a lot about who the ATP Atelier woman is, and one of our muses was the singer Nico. She’s a perfect example of a woman who goes her own way and inspires others. ATP Atelier’s name comes from the iconic song she did with The Velvet Underground called ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’.

On her inspiration

My inspiration is always people. It can be anyone from peers I meet in our industry to my family, a stranger in an art gallery or the girls in my team. But right now I’m also very much inspired by interior design and how you build a universe and a mood of colour, shapes, materials and light. We are moving into a new office in a few weeks and I love leading the project of realizing ATP Atelier as a physical space in this new chapter of our brand.

On the meaning of luxury

We like to challenge the concept of luxury - to make it smart, not redundant. Smart Luxury is the ATP Atelier way of living. It’s a lifestyle based on conscious choices, from a socially, ecologically and emotionally sustainable point of view. It may sound pompous and hard to grasp, but it’s really about the little things. It goes beyond the making of their product and speaks to the everyday - to your grocery shopping list, your travel plans or habits of recreation and ultimately, to how you feel about yourself. Smart Luxury is not about extravagance or frills - it’s about taking care of you. To allow yourself to not follow the broadest path and to spend your time and money on the things and experiences in life that last, both for your own sake, but also for the world we live in.

On wearing bags this summer

My go-to look for summer is a flowy kaftan, it never ever fails and goes great with our accessories. I love how our sharp cut-out designs contrast the soft silhouette of a caftan. I’ll pair that with a smaller bag or a clutch.

On forthcoming summer parties

Me and my husband spend most of our free time in a house we just built in Puglia in the south of Italy. It’s our sanctuary and it’s also built with all of our friends and family in mind. I am so looking forward to making countless memories in this house cooking, hosting dinner parties in the dining room and having aperitivos by the pool. The lifestyle that surrounds brand is also very much inspired by the Italian way of living. I would recommend everyone to take a trip to Puglia and take it all in.

ATP Atelier is available online and in our Brown Thomas Cork, Limerick and Dundrum stores.

TAKE A PASSEGGIATA WITH ATP ATELIER

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