Entitled “The Collective,” the SS24 editorial is a celebration of some of the many women who serve as inspiration for the house. In this three-part series, we capture recording sessions and confessional conversations with brand muses Lily McMenamy, Nella Ngingo, and Adina Fohlin—all people of artistic sensibility, personifying the Aeyde ideals of ingenuity and modernity. Aiming to reframe the concept of the oft-referenced muse, we invite each woman to take control of their own narrative. This is Adina.
When we take a moment between takes with Adina Fohlin, the life story she recounts is relatable and normal–and, because of this, it’s all the more enjoyable to witness. Settling into a candid conversation with a warm-up question, we ask Adina to describe what she does, and her answer is contemplative. “That’s a good question I keep asking myself,” she says. “I do lots of things, but I guess I’m an artist.”
Originally from Stockholm, Adina lives and practices as an artist and a model in the city she grew up in. Occasionally, she books modeling work in Stockholm, too, but assignments tend to take her all over–to Berlin, to Italy, to Copenhagen. On set with Aeyde, it’s her second time in Berlin in the space of a week, and she’s fresh off the Copenhagen Fashion Week circuit.
She recently turned 39, but as a teenager in the early noughties, Adina trod the well-worn path most international models do: she was scouted in her home city of Stockholm and subsequently moved to New York. Myriam Obadiah, the Creative Director of Next Models, described Adina as someone who doesn’t resemble the usual coterie of models. Adina would establish herself walking for Céline (with the accent), Calvin Klein, and Alexander McQueen at a seminal time for the industry, when fashion shows moved out of the exclusionary fashion-editor sphere and broke open for the masses, thanks to the burgeoning accessibility of fashion media. Since her return to Europe, Adina has worked consistently, collecting covers for magazines like SSAW and walking for Acne Studios, Max Mara, and Dilara Fındıkoğlu.
“Those years at the ballet have really formed me, not only my body but my soul.”
Early into our conversation, she refers to her parents and how they kicked off a “formative experience” by signing her up for ballet lessons in the mid-nineties. “I started dancing at an early age.” she says. “Then I joined the School of the Opera House [in Stockholm] when I was nine.” Intrigued by the relationship between ballet and ‘muscle memory,’ we inquire if Adina can still master the ballet sequences she learned all those years ago. She answers in the affirmative: “I can master them all.”
Of the memories Adina holds dear from that time, she is resolute and recounts them affectionately. “Those years at the ballet have formed me, not only my body but my soul.” Of the through line that period has between her life then and now, she is resolute, telling us, “I have some of my best friends from that time. It’s something like the collective feeling of doing this together–we’re a little bit ‘the weirdos,’ you know, from the other people in school.”
Touching on collectivity and interconnectedness–themes central to the concept underpinning the SS24 Kollektion–we speak about the grounding feeling these experiences can bring to a person’s entire being. Adina believes, “It’s an experience that I use in my work today as a model or as an actor in my art.”
“For me to feel the most connected to other people and things, I have to start with myself.”
When we probe other potential creative ventures, Adina is frank. “There's always something, right? Lately, I've been working with clay,” she says. “That I really enjoy. But I think I tricked myself because I always worked with my body by dancing, modeling, and acting. And then I got pregnant, and I was like, ‘I don’t want to use my body. I’m going to use something else, another medium.’” What Adina hadn’t realized, however, was that by working with clay, she was still very much working with form, with the body. “But I would like to work more with clay and more acting,” she continues. “I just want to evolve in the talents I have.”
In line with this, would she ever step away from using her body as a medium? Adina is unwavering, answering, “No, I just had to, what’s the word, surrender to… this is my talent, and love it and embrace it.” Pulling at this thread, we consider her intrinsic skills, mulling over the connections that take her through life and what she needs from them. “For me to feel the most connected to other people and things, I have to start with myself,” she says. “I meditate every morning to connect with myself.”
We veer into muse territory and ask Adina whether she, given her many accolades, believes herself also to be one. She hesitates, choosing to talk about one of her personal muses instead—the German model, musician, and actress Nico. “I’m just reading her biography, the latest one. She’s always been a source of inspiration.” While taking a moment with Adina in between takes on set later on, we naturally pick up on this conversation about Nico again. Adina says, “The way she performs this person, I guess we all do that in everyday life, but she does it, you know, on another level.”
“I can be kind and generous and take responsibility for my actions in relation to other people. Other than that, I just have to be myself, and I can’t please everyone, right?”
Another person who readily comes to mind when considering inspiration is Adina’s young daughter, Teddy. She says, “Kids are really in the present… I always want to return to being that present, as she is.”
As Adina is called for her final set-up of the shoot, we wrap up this conversation while probing the influence of other people’s perceptions on her character and her work. Quiet for a moment, Adina is firm in her answer: “I’ve come to terms that I’m powerless over that. I can be kind and generous and take responsibility for my actions in relation to other people. Other than that, I just have to be myself, and I can’t please everyone, right?”
Discover the new SS24 Kollektion here.
