The Ice Crystal Princess – Vol II by Jørgen Simonsen
“The Ice Crystal Princess” – that could sound like the title of a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, could it not?
– but it is not!
Now you shall hear the story of “The Ice Crystal Princess” by Jørgen Simonsen
It is the story of how the designer Jørgen Simonsen has built a bridge between French haute couture and life in Greenland.
Childhood in Struer.
Jørgen was born and raised in the Jutland soil – in Struer, to be precise.
There he had a really good friend at school called Ann. She was Greenlandic.
Ann had learned needlework at her grandmother’s home, because her grandmother knew all the old Greenlandic needlework traditions.
Jørgen was very taken with everything Ann and her grandmother could do with needle and thread.
The grandmother taught Ann respect for needlework and the pride of being able to create something with her hands. In that way the grandmother quite naturally passed on both a skill and a cultural heritage to Ann.
Towards Paris – the city of clothing culture.
The needlework fascinated Jørgen so much that at the age of 18 he booked a one-way ticket to Paris.
He wanted to go to Paris and learn to make beautiful clothes.
His goal was a career in design.
Paris is the city where generations of taste for beautiful clothes and good style are gathered in one place.
So it was exactly the right place for Jørgen to go, with his luggage full of dreams of creating handsome clothes in lovely materials.
Jørgen trained as a designer in Paris and worked for many famous and skilled fashion houses.
All the while he remembered the inspiration he had been given at the home of his childhood friend Ann and her grandmother, and everything he had learned about keeping a craft tradition alive.
75 drawings – for his own pleasure.
Then one day he began to design a collection entirely of his own.
He began that project because he could not help it. It was purely for his own pleasure.
His great passion for good craftsmanship and two elements that fascinate Jørgen – namely Greenlandic culture mixed with biker culture – inspired him to his first own collection.
It consists of 75 handsome drawings of women in beautiful clothes, where you can clearly see the inspiration from Greenland mixed with biker culture.
He called the collection “The Ice Crystal Princess”
One of the dresses is inspired by old Greenlandic ice charts.
Jørgen had spent hours studying the old charts at the national library in Paris.
The charts are so old and fine that he had to wear white cotton gloves when looking at them.
He mixed all the inspiration with free imagination and created some impressively beautiful sketches, which later became dresses, and they were seen and admired on the catwalk.
All the dresses are sewn from sealskin and have clear references to the Greenlandic national costume.
A murder changed Jørgen’s life.
One morning in July 1998 Gianni Versace had been down to the local kiosk to pick up his morning papers as usual.
On his way home – just outside his gate – he was brutally murdered. Now the Italian fashion house Versace was without a chief designer.
His sister, Donatella, was looking for someone who could take up her brother’s legacy and carry the fashion house on.
Jørgen was invited to Italy by Donatella.
In his luggage he had his sketches for “The Ice Crystal Princess”, which he wanted to show Donatella.
She was so enthusiastic about them that she picked out 20 sketches.
Jørgen was told to start the next day in the job as chief designer for Versace.
“The Ice Crystal Princess” became the starting shot for Atelier Versace’s first haute couture collection after Gianni Versace’s brutal death.
In collaboration with the house’s skilled staff, Jørgen conjured up an impressively beautiful collection in sealskin with Greenland as the source of inspiration. It was received positively everywhere.
20 years later: The Ice Crystal Princess travelled out into the world.
About 20 years later Jørgen followed up on his beautiful collection “The Ice Crystal Princess”.
In 2016 Jørgen visited Greenland for the first time.
In collaboration with NAPA – the Nordic Institute in Greenland – the Kittat sewing workshop in Nuuk, the national costume school in Sisimiut and the National Museum in Nuuk, they made five new silhouettes (outfits), primarily in sealskin, for his collection “The Ice Crystal Princess”, which is now called “The Ice Crystal Princess – vol. II”.
“The Ice Crystal Princess” went on tour.
The story of “The Ice Crystal Princess – vol. II” is told in skin, needle and thread, and was put on display.
The Ice Crystal Princess began her journey in Nuuk.
After that the tour went on to Stockholm, Paris, Copenhagen, Struer, Karasjok (Norway), Reykjavik and Tórshavn, where it has been admired.
The mission of “The Ice Crystal Princess – Vol II”
“The Ice Crystal Princess – vol II” is an attempt to understand what happens when a fashion designer is inspired.
What does it do to the culture he is inspired by?
What happens to the expression that is born of the inspiration?
Allowing inspiration is the designer’s reason for being, Jørgen believes.
The cultural history of any society is always developing.
In a small society like the Greenlandic one it is particularly important that the development finds room in new expressions that reach beyond the country’s borders and invite the outside world into dialogue.
Jørgen’s collection is handsome proof of that.
Perhaps you would also like to read what happened when “The Ice Crystal Princess – Vol II” came to Greenland.
