Curated By: Nudie Jeans 2001
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25 years in the making. Still not finished.
Let’s take you back to Gothenburg in 2001. It rained then, just like it does now. Rehearsal spaces in basements, a love for second-hand, cheap beer, and nights that quietly turned into mornings.
Put on these tracks and get into a 2001-ish Gothenburg state of mind before your scroll.
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Gothenburg harbour early 2000s. If you were a friend of Maria and Joakim, odds were you'd be pulled into Nudie Jeans by default.
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It all started in a small office with a ping-pong table as a desk, cold rooms, too many thoughts and not much structure, and no real plan to speak of.
I’m a damn punk drummer from Alingsås. I’ve never sold jeans to other countries.
-Joakim Levin
Maria has described that feeling before, how you slowly end up somewhere and only later stop to ask yourself how it all came about. That’s what it felt like in the beginning.
We didn’t really know what we were doing. There were sketches, fabric swatches, and ideas that didn’t fully make sense yet, but somehow started to fall into place somewhere between a beer at lunch and another one late at night. Because there was a feeling that it had to be done.
Maria working from instinct, curiosity, impulse. Joakim coming in from a completely different place, a punk drummer from Alingsås who had never had a 'real' job. No one had done this before, at least not like this.
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Martin Gustavsson, Joakims former band member stepped up. Today he's our Chief Creative Officer.
It didn’t really feel like starting a company, it felt more like starting a band. Friends stepping in, helping out, doing a bit of everything and figuring things out as they went, because there wasn’t another way.
And sometimes things went wrong, which they still do.
Like the first production of Flare Glenn, where the unwashed version came back completely off. Impossible to put on, no one would fit into them. That night Maria ended up on the floor, with the investment at risk and everything feeling uncertain, and Joakim sat down next to her and read from a children’s book about a little lion until things felt slightly more manageable.
That was also part of the beginning.
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All man and babies on deck in those early days.
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From the start, there was always their intent to create something more than just jeans, an idea that what you make should mean something, that it should last, carry a story, and be worn, repaired and lived in.
I would liken myself to a person who is driven to seize opportunities by curiosity and impulse.
- Maria Erixon
On April 10th, the first invoice was issued. A small moment, easy to miss, but that was it. Nudie Jeans was born.
25 years later, we’re still on that same journey, still building, still learning, still on tour.
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“Works but do not close.”
To mark today, our 25th birthday, we’ve put together a Curated by playlist, a soundtrack from those early days in Gothenburg in the early 2000s.
We’re still on the road, and we haven’t reached our destination yet.
How it started
Start your own f*cking brand Book English
20 GBP
Conny Denim Jacket Dry One
185 GBP
Flare Glenn Dry One
145 GBP
Regular Alf Dry One
145 GBP
