Extreme Cashmere Weather: Amsterdam-based Cult Brand Adds Warmth to London’s Chiltern Street
LONDON — The world of cashmere.
Extreme Cashmere, the Amsterdam-based cult brand, has taken over Ssōne’s store on London’s Chiltern Street, neighbors with Andre Balazs’ luxury hotel and restaurant, Chiltern Firehouse, fashion label Casely-Hayford, and newly opened lab-diamond brand Kimai.
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Ssōne is a contemporary women’s fashion apparel and lifestyle brand. The affluent street is the place for sustainable brands with a slow ethos.
Extreme Cashmere has taken full rein of Ssōne for three months until February — turning it into a colorful world of luxurious cashmere with the mannequins completely covered in the fiber. Some even have cashmere braided hairstyles in burgundy red and dust, which resembles a sandy blond.
The brand experimented with Ssōne last year by hosting an event at the store with a mix of other brands available for purchase.
“We’ve had quite a big following in London and the U.K. already because we have a healthy distribution with Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, Browns and Matchesfashion, so people know us,” said Nisse van Rossum, account manager at Extreme Cashmere.
“For us, it was kind of like the logical place to do a store takeover with a guerrilla pop-up element. We also specifically chose Chiltern Street because it’s a typical menswear area and of course we want to push our multigender collection, so we focused a little bit more on that,” added van Rossum, explaining that Extreme Cashmere is planning on replicating the template in multiple places in the future.
The brand will be presenting its fall 2023 collection during Paris Fashion Week in the 1st arrondissement with a showroom called the “winter house,” which follows the brand’s house model of taking over spaces to showcase their collections.
“There will be couches and a big dinner table installation because we love to do our dinners,” said van Rossum, alluding to the brand’s tradition of inviting over a chef to prepare dinner for clients.
In June, Extreme Cashmere underwent a digital transformation and relaunched its website with the aim to help customers shop more efficiently. Full looks can be bought instantly without having to add multiple items to your basket as part of the plan to introduce an occasions subcategory that will feature curated ensembles for different events.
“I call it a live magazine where you can go shopping,” said Saskia Dijkstra, the founder of the brand, in an interview with WWD recently, adding that it’s simultaneously a useful tool to help customers with cashmere conundrums such as navigating how to wash their “machine-washable sweaters.”
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