The young Swedish-born designer references her country’s well-known approach to keeping things simple in matters of design (anyone heard of IKEA?) as a primary foundation for her own work. “I don’t think any designer can really avoid their heritage”, she notes, jokingly pointing out how noticeable that becomes whenever she travels: “You always get to be the most Swedish when you are not in Sweden.”
     The majority of Malmgren’s time abroad has been spent in London attending famed Central Saint Martins, the school notorious for churning bold-minded fashion students into mind-bending fashion designers – if Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, and John Galliano are any example. The recent graduate is also experimenting with footwear that follows her signature “bold plus simple” formula: towering heels of startling proportion which not only anchor the clothes, but shift their entire dynamic towards one leaning more futuristic than simply modern. In keeping with her forward-thinking, Malmgren presented her collection through a short video shot by Anna Sundstrom, titled Normal. Ironically, the footage – set to pounding, tribal-like music – is anything but, articulating more effectively than words the undercurrent of mystery and androgyny felt in her work.
     With a similar hint of mystery, the young designer offers a simple reply when asked how she came to designing fashion: “Somewhere along the line, I just couldn’t see myself working with anything else.”