Augusta Lundin

Who was Augusta Lundin?

Augusta Lundin was a Swedish fashion designer. She is considered to be the first international Swedish fashion designer as well as the first well known fashion designer in Sweden.

Born to a tailor in Kristianstad, she learned the profession as a child and was in the 1860s employed in a hatshop and fashion shop in Stockholm before she opened her own studio in 1867. She made study trips to Paris once a year and was very successful. She introduced the French method of making every part of a dress separately to Sweden. In 1886, she designed a "reformed costume", a loose dress without corset or bustle, on commission of the reformed dress society, which desired a more healthy dress model for women.

Among her clientele were Selma Lagerlöf, Josephine of Leuchtenberg and Sophie of Nassau, as well as international clients. King Oscar II of Sweden gave away her dresses as Christmas gifts every year to the lady-in-waitings at the royal court. In 1892, she was made official dressmaker of the royal court; at assignments for the court, she brought models to the royal palace to display the clothes.

Lundin was known as a good employer: she was an honorary member of the dressmaker's society and aware of the fact that seamstresses often damaged their backs and eyes at work, she instigated a 12-hour work shift and a two-week summer vacation, something quite unique for employers of her time. She employed only women until 1910. At her death in 1919, she left the company to her siblings' children. In the 1920s, the company experienced difficulties because of the simplified fashion and the confection industry; it was closed in 1939.