While celebrated for its minimalism, Scandinavian design often takes you by surprise: the simple meets the unexpected. The ECCO GEOMETRIK group has clean, simple silhouettes inspired by the classic paper shopping bag, and from that simplicity comes much of their everyday elegance.
But look a little more closely and you’ll see that these leather bags have a custom-made embossed pattern that introduces a geometrical dimension which adds depth, character and a distinctive feature. That original pattern, created by ECCO Accessories, is itself rooted in simplicity and the fundamentals of Scandinavian design – the starting point for the designers was the simple shapes of circles, squares and triangles.
For Solveig Gubser, a senior designer for ECCO Accessories, who created the pattern, inspiration often strikes when she switches from the two-dimensional world – sketching on paper – to the three-dimensional.
“I get my best ideas when I just pick up some paper, start playing with it and folding it, creating shapes and details, without thinking too much. This experimental process offers much more to discover than just sketching on paper. I think it’s the third dimension that gives me so many more ideas than when I’m just sketching and staying in the two-dimensional world. That is how the ECCO GEOMETRIK pattern was created.”
After cutting circles, squares and triangles out of paper and leather, Solveig played with them in the studio, folding and stacking them until she found a pattern as ‘eye-catching’ as it was unique that would add ‘an element of surprise’ to the ECCO GEOMETRIK bags.
“The pattern creates a kind og geometrical depth and is surprising and refreshing at the same time,” says Solveig. “When we embossed leather for the first time with the pattern, we liked it so much that we wanted to see the pattern on a bag. I knew immediately that this would look great on a bag, and that people would love it. It struck us how the pattern added a new dimension to the leather surface that makes a simple bag interesting and unique. Together, my colleague and I created simple bag shapes to apply the pattern to.”
Crafted from firm, rich leather from our own tanneries, the ECCO GEOMETRIK bags are a modern, luxurious expression of our Scandinavian heritage.
THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY FEATURED IN ECCO JOURNAL. FIND ECCO JOURNAL IN YOUR LOCAL ECCO STORE - OR CLICK HERE TO ACCESS AN ONLINE VERSION.
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About ECCO
ECCO is one of the world’s leading shoe brands, combining style and comfort. ECCO’s success is built on products with a great fit and top-quality leathers. ECCO owns and manages every aspect of the value chain from tanneries and shoe manufacturing to wholesale and retail activities. ECCO’s products are sold in 90 countries from over 2,200 ECCO shops and more than 14,000 sales points. ECCO is family-owned, founded in Denmark in 1963, and employs more than 21,000 people worldwide.