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Head of Rika, Rika Magazine & former stylist

We’ve met Ulrika Lundgren,  in the course of her presentation of RIKA & Uslu Airlines nail polish collaboration in Cabinet at Quartier 206 on last Thursday. Before she left Berlin the next day we met for breakfast and asked her a few questions about Rika, the roots of her label and the creation of her star-symbol.

MC:             You have been working as a stylist, then you founded your label RIKA which led to release a magazine as well. When you are being asked for your job, what is your answer?

UL:              I would say I am a creative director, I don‘t call myself a designer because I am not educated this way. I need other people helping me. I can have a vision and ideas but I never can put it on paper technically. I think more like a stylist than like a designer, I get more inspired by pictures, girls in the streets and movies or music and then I pick a little bit from everything plus the knowledge of what‘s coming in the next year, which I got from styling. This is our way of working. Usually I make little sketches and collages, which I give to my designers and at the end we are creating the whole thing together.

MC:             Are you still working as a stylist?

UL :            Not anymore. At the moment my focus is the label RIKA. Everything goes out of RIKA, That‘s also why we do the magazine, because I started to miss not to be a stylist a little bit. Because it is great as well,  you can go out into the world and meet up with different people. When you only work with one brand it suddenly becomes a one-side thing. I don‘t want RIKA as a centre concept, with the magazine I can involve other characters, different types of professions and then you can create something that you‘ve never expected. In the development of creating RIKA magazine I worked with those interesting, strong characters, like Irina Lazareanu or Josephine de la Baume, these are not only models but persuasive characters. And in return those characters inspire me to create a new and amazing thing and hold on to my vision.

MC:            How did it all start? What was the beginning of your career?

UL:             It started when I moved to Amsterdam. I went to a Interior-Design School in Amsterdam and my exam there was to create a concept for an Interior-design publication, so I started to actually work for different brands there, like doing their showrooms and doing creative interior direction. From there I hooked up with some photographers and we started to work. We thought there are so many interior mags, why don’t we try to do something new, try to find odd places. We started to go out and search for people that had something more to tell… For example you are doing jewellery, so why don’t we show how you get the inspiration of making jewellery, so we started to do that and I started to work for a couple of  Magazines like CASA and VOUGE and that kind of magazines. We were doing Stories like that and then it all started. I did a lot. I started travelling all over the World….

MC:            But your base still was Amsterdam?

UL:             Yes it was Amsterdam. We did these stories all around the world. We have been travelling like 7 month a year or something. And then in between we did commercials and advertising and then I thought maybe It’s the person in the shoot that I’m more interested in than the Interiors. And I started to focus on persons and then it became fashion and so I started to do fashion styling…

MC            Was it difficult to change these branches, to get into the fashion industry?

UL:            I think what I’m strong in,  is if I want something, I do it. It’s something like if you have something that you really want to do, then you should just do it. I did the whole RIKA thing by taking risks. You always need to take risks. I didn’t take a big risk. It just all started from there. As I said, I was a fashion stylist for a while and then we started to make my bags on a trip when we were travelling. We did these Bags with a saddle maker in Spain and they looked good and people said: “you should do something like that, you always collect all these vintage bags and you always have bags and bags and bags…” They where always handmade and Rock and Roll but also a little bit romantic in their styles…

MC:             What kind of Material was it?

UL:              It’s leather. Saddle leather. The guy in Spain was a saddle maker. And then we had that guy in Sweden who was doing all the saddle works for the Hells Angels. So we started it there. And then we took it to New York and Helena Christensen kept a Party for me in NY and showed the things that we were doing and so it kind of started over there. There’s never been a business plan for Rika. We kind of did it for fun and then there were eight different bags and we started to do parties where we invited some girls to my place and we had drinks. That was all in Amsterdam or in NY.

MC:             Like Tupper Parties…?

UL:              Yes! Exactly like that…. and these Girls had these bags that nobody else had. And then there where some good stores like Collette’s or Barnes in NY. They liked that. At that time they were looking for something on the market that was new, with more personality, not like the big Brands. So I thought maybe I should get a little more serious  about it so I wanted to find a symbol and I found the Star…. It’s a spiritual sign for me. I think we’re all connected with the stars. Even when I was a kid the star always was a great symbol to me. We were sitting in the atelier of this Hells Angels guy, on his floor, and he was doing lots of tribals and so on, but I didn’t really like it all, so I said why not take my Star. Let’s keep it simple, keep it classic and then we did the Classic Star Bag, which we are doing since six years now and that still is the best selling bag. That is the Classic one. It’s great, cause we used vegetable dyed leather on them and it’s no chemicals on these bags. We have twenty men in Istanbul in a factory and they are hand stitching the bags. I tried to avoid the glue and then I tried to avoid the chemicals. It’s not that I go out and say that we are organic,  but I think you should think about the environment. Whatever you do, you should take care about health. Yeah, that’s how the Stars came and then you get obsessed about it. It’s like with the magazine, you get obsessed about it and so. And then you keep on doing it. I lost track of styling, because there was just not enough time to do all of that.

MC:            Do you feel successful?

UL:             I would say I am successful in the way that I want to be successful in. I don‘t want to push RIKA to be hip or huge, like other labels do that. I don‘t need that, when I started RIKA I followed my inspiration. With RIKA we want to grow slowly and keep our classical roots e.g. the first bag, which I made.

It doesn‘t matter what you do, in any case you should follow instinct, what you really believe in. With RIKA I still want to keep my identity. And after a certain time, when you grow in that business, you‘ll be asked after your root and identity and you can say there, that is my red line. I held it over all the years.

First I found an identity for the collection which I adapted to a magazine. With RIKA magazine I don’t have the pressure like big magazines have it with their adverts, I can be more creative, RIKA now is like a little factory, like Andy Warhol, where everything influences each other. E.g. we had this shooting, in which we had no idea what to do. We wanted to do nothing with fashion and we let it run. And the result was fantastic, this is the freedom which I have, it has a great energy. And that’s why the people read RIKA magazine, it can be arty, fashionable, but it transfers an energy and that is why people wear RIKA label.

MC:          Who is Ul-rika in 3 sentences?

UL:             I am curios. Ulrika is simplicity with an edge. Ulrika enjoys life to the maximum.

Thanks Ulrika & Rosa

interview by schlott

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