Introducing: Anna-Sara Dåvik

31-year-old Swedish designer Anna-Sara Dåvik makes the most of what she’s got. Until recently, her studio and office in the humble outskirts of Stockholm were also the designer’s showroom. For her 2009 accessories collection, Essence of A-S, Dåvik collaborated with her father, a goldsmith. The essence of Anna-Sara, it appears, is monogrammed fake fingernails in real gold and silver.

Dåvik graduated from Central Saint Martins in London in 2006 and set out in short order to open not just her own, eponymous collection, but to make accessories, too. “It’s relaxing to work at two different paces,” she says. “Selling accessories strengthens my label and in the process enables me to develop clothes, which is what I essentially love doing.” And those clothes witness the designer’s conceptual engagement: like, for instance, a caramel brushed wool coat with rounded shoulders and a boxy silhouette, to be paired with a pair of heavily draped trousers. Her use of materials is dramatic and surprising, including a sheer black silk chiffon pantsuit, and a romper in paper silk. Anna-Sara Dåvik’s oeuvre is partial to monochrome which, according to the designer herself, makes it more “feasible to concentrate on the particular elements of her design,” with an air of unfading female elegance. In March 2010, Dåvik revealed her latest project, “Suit Yourself.” As the name suggests, potential customers need to personally contact Dåvik with measurements. “Each ware is one original piece” she says, “made by hand in my studio, and custom made on commission.”