A Swedish department store on Saturday canceled what was to be the sale of the “first ever” brand of jeans made in North Korea, the Swedish company behind the communist-made dark denims said.
“Apparently PUB [department store] has censored our exhibition/store by shutting it down and ‘confiscating’ the jeans because of the ‘working conditions in North Korea,’” Jakob Ohlsson of the company Noko Jeans said in an e-mail. “At first I thought it was a joke, but everything has been removed from the store.”
Ohlsson, along with Jacob Aastroem and Tor Rauden Kaellstigen — all under the age of 25 and with no previous experience in business or fashion — started Noko Jeans in 2007, prompted by a desire to contact isolationist North Korea.
PHOTO: EPA
Their designer jeans were to be sold starting on Saturday at Aplace, a boutique that is a tenant of the trendy PUB department store in central Stockholm.
NO SALES
“A half-hour before opening, we got a call from the head of the department store and he explained to me ... that PUB cannot sell the Noko Jeans,” Kalle Tollmar, the founder and chief executive of Aplace said.
“The explanation I got was that [the store’s management] had taken the decision ... that PUB is not the right place, or platform, for this kind of political discussion,” he said, confirming his store was hoping to continue distribution of the controversial duds at another location.
The Noko Jeans sales space at PUB was deserted on Saturday, the jeans removed and a surrounding photo exhibition taken down by the department store’s security personnel.
“They have it in a locked room at PUB, but we have been promised to get everything back on Monday, it’s only for security reasons, they don’t want us to sell the jeans,” Tollmar said.
SALES MUSEUM
Noko Jeans referred to their sales space as a “museum, because our experiment is much more a story ... of how this happened, what happened and about some of the people we met and came to love in North Korea” than just a pair of jeans, Jacob Aastroem said.
“We think its really, really sad, because we back up Noko jeans by 100 percent,” Aplace’s head buyer Dan Jaget said from the store, adding his boutique had started selling the jeans online.
The “made in North Korea” designer denims have garnered much media attention and customers flocked to PUB on Saturday to get their hands on the jeans, which retail for around 1,500 Swedish kronor (US$226) a pair.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
RSS