Tiger of Sweden – SS23

For Tiger of Sweden’s SS23 collection, creative director Bryan Conway pulled out the sort of personal image one would normally hide deep in a desk drawer. The photo is of himself as a teen, flanked by his three sisters, on vacation in the south of Spain. Despite the warm weather, he wears a black bomber jacket and blue jeans, painfully over-accessorised with a chunky belt and glasses. His hair in a straight swooped fringe.

“I’m embracing the person I used to be,” Conway tells me over Zoom. “It’s so relatable, because everyone has a photo like this.” Though his first instinct was to be embarrassed by the image, he has since come around. “Maybe I did look cool at the time,” he muses.

The corresponding collection is steeped in nostalgia – early noughties styling. Unnecessary scarves and sleazy bootcut jeans. Then there are the belts. Conway was digging through the archives when he found something spectacular. “I came across this thing, do you remember this?” He asks, holding up a white leather belt with a gaudy tiger buckle. “In the early 2000s, Tiger sold, like, hundreds of thousands of these.” The belt is so wrong it’s right, indicative of a time when more was certainly more. It reminded Conway of his penchant for “coloured belts, coloured scarves, ties, clashing everything”. “Really gaudy s***,” he says.

Captured in Mallorca on a mix of models and locals, the SS23 collection is Tiger’s version of “gaudy s***”. A micro mini skirt pairs with a meticulously tailored moto jacket. A second skin body suit with draping dripping off the shoulder is ready to head to a beach party. There are more subdued, elegant looks as well – slip dresses and relaxed suits – to cleanse the palette. Then there is, of course, an updated version of that totally wild tiger belt. The collection is aptly dubbed 'Fabulous You, Beautiful Me'.

I ask if the photographer, Daragh Soden, had any trouble convincing local beachgoers to participate in the lookbook. As it turns out, not everyone was up for the assignment. “At one point, our cameraman had to kind of leg it away because two big muscly guys were confronting him who didn’t want to be in a photo,” Conway says. There was one subject, however, who was totally game. He opens the lookbook in a modernised snake print shirt and red shorts. “This guy, Karl, absolutely loved it.”