The fact that our dear Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden is getting married tomorrow to Mr. Daniel Westling, soon to be HRH Prince Daniel, well that's news that has scarcely escaped a single soul living here in this our land, woman, man, child or beast — and that's still phrasing it moderately...

One of our own six classic images of the Crown Princess from Stockholm New No.12 — The Royal issue from 2002 —  photograhped by Mikael Jansson, who else? — has lately been seen in all kinds of media, as it's apparently become some kind of poster image, without our or Mikael’s knowledge or conset, for the recently opened exhibition "Bernadotter i svart och vitt" (Bernadottes in black and white) in Sweden's National Museum here in Stockholm. Thus, we thought that we might as well present the other five images in our famous series of "fashion portraits" of the then 24-year old Crown Princess, as our own wedding present {small-size, "jumpy" and irregular formats, but all the same).  

The legendary Crown Princess shoot, which came to be after that Claes Britton had encountered the Crown Princess during the Swedish Style event in Tokyo in 2001, is a cherished memory. We'll never forget the chock of massive attention that came down on us like thunder the minute our magazine — the most recently published issue of Stockholm New — left the printers in Milan. For three or four weeks, our phones never stopped ringing. It was editors from gossip magazines from all around the globe, calling around the clock offering phantasy amounts for the rights to publish our images. Also, we'll never forget the surprise in their voices when the finally realized that the pictures really weren't for sale, at any price. We stuck to our gentlemen's agreement with the Royal Court, and never allowed the images to go any further. They remained reserved to the readers of Stockholm New, so it's an exclusive collection that we here present you with.

With this beautiful memory we are honored to wish the Royal Couple nothing but all the very best! 

27 April will see the release of Claes Britton's already much publicized, deeply personal book Min mamma är död ( "My mother is dead")

Yes, 27 April is the official "review date", as it's called, for my, mildly expressed, painfully personal book Min mamma är död ("My mother is dead") (Albert Bonniers förlag). A labor of love and sorrow you may indeed call this book, slim and light as it is in its form, but oh so heavy in its content, the very essence of death and suffering, seen from my very own perspective. It has delighted me immensely that the relatively few who have yet read the book have all told me that they've found it utterly light and soothing — that they've even felt comforted in their own death anxiety after reading it. If you're interested, and able to read Swedish, the current issues of magazines Femina, Tara and Icakuriren all feature extensive interviews with me, as does today's (13 April) issue of Dagens Nyheter, Sweden's leading daily. If you still haven't had enough of Yours Truly, you'll be able to read, see and hear more in various media in the near future, starting tonight in Kulturnyheterna in Sweden’s state television. My personal favorite is my publisher's own interview, written by an author whom I hold in the very highest esteem...

The book is, if I'm correctly informed, already available in shops and certainly to order on the web.

"The clock turns midnight and I cry uncontrollably as I read. I awake at 05.30 and continue reading about his death anxiety, about care at the end of life, and I understand why I'm so profoundly struck by the book. I also have a loved mother. Who keeps getting worse (...)

The undiscribable hell on earth in Haiti faded away in my mind when I read Britton's book. I crawls so near, all the way into my intestines. And it's always like that — a single individual's private pain penetrates deeper than that of an entire group.

I have a powerful inclination for the dark side of human life. Perhaps it is to constantly provoke the feeling that there is so much to be joyous and greatful over. That's why I dressed in the pretty top with a silky turtle neck and a small rose today. To meet the day a little better."

-Legendary Swedish magazine editor Amelia Adamo writes about my book in her blog

We can't resist lately posting this one and only campaign image of the season for Don Donna, this little gem of a brand which we sincerely hope to have the privilege of developing in the  near future. We're childishly encharmed by what we consider our find of the season, model Josefin E from Stockholmsgruppen. The image is photographed by John Scarisbrick and styled by Kattis Lindoff.

BrittonBritton contributes image, design and communication for the new Nobis Hotel in our Royal Swedish Capital's most premium square Norrmalmstorg — Stockholm's first contemporary luxury hotel to be opened in December.

Yes indeed that fine Norrmalmstorg square has always been the most expensive spot in the Swedish version of Monopoly, and everyone who has ever played that game knows all too well what happens when you build an hotel in that spot...ah well, the time has come at last!

The past Tuesday we staged the first press sneak preview of Nobis Hotel, the new, grand, contemporary 201-room luxury hotel on Norrmalmstorg square, the most stylish and prestigious sqaure in the dead center of downtown Stockholm which will open in December, owned and managed by our dear old friend Alessandro "Sandro" Catenacci and his The Nobis Group, the owners of Operakällaren (The Opera Celler) and Café Opera, Sweden's most famous restaurant and nightclub respectively, and a number of other distinguished and historic restaurants and hotels in the Stockholm area. BrittonBritton is commissioned with the overall responsibility for the image, graphic design and communication for this new hotel, still a construction site.

Nobis Hotel will be a hotel of a kind hitherto lacking here in Stockholm — a modern and contemporary hotel that will define its own sense of luxury; one that is elegant, sophisticated and extremely comfortable, but also sound, reasonable and morally justifiable, devoid of the opulent excesses of traditional luxury. The hotel is built in two magnificent stone buildings from the late 19th century on the sunny side of Norrmalmstorg (the Acne flagship is housed in one them, the Marimekko ditto in the other), with a sharp contrasting contemporary interior design by our friends Claesson Koivisto Rune. Transforming these culturally strictly protected buildings into a superior standard modern hotel is no mean feat. Construction has been ongoing at top pace for more than a year already. The investment is considerable.  

In addition to the 201 rooms — eight of which are suites — Nobis Hotel will boost some 800 plus square meters of public focal points — restaurants, bars and lounges. We are fully convinced that these spaces will form a new formidable center stage in downtown Stockholm where Stockholmers will mingle with visitors from all around the world, 24/7/365.

The large restaurant will be, as it should, Italian (given the ancestry of Sandro Catenacci). It will be named, as it should, Caina. All of us familiar with Stockholm's modern restaurant history remember vividly the classic first version of the restaurant with that name, opened back in 1980 by the at that time merely 21-year old bold and daring restaurant entrepreneur Sandro and his father Vicenzo "Enzo" Catenacci, the great chef, assisted at the stove by the then merely 14-year old Stefano Catenacci, located on the then super oddball adress of Folkungagatan in Södermalm, operated by four generations of the Catenacci family. Some three decades later, the hotel's gastronomic director Stefano Catenacci is now one of Sweden's most famous, celebrated and decorated chefs and the Executive Chef of the Royal Court of Sweden, responsible for this upcoming summer's Royal wedding, no less. He guarantees that Caina in its new guise will be a classic and traditional, truly genuine Italian restaurant of the very highest order — a kind of restaurant that has been missing in this town for all too long alas; ever since the first version of Caina closed down after just three brief, tremendously successful years, as a matter of fact. Moreover, Nobis Hotel will sport a smaller bistro and bar, the 24/7 bistro, where freshly cooked high quality food, as the name indicates, will be served 24 hours, 365 days a year. Also, we'll all be able to convene over stylishly irresistable cocktails in the spectacular, cathedral-resembling lounge — we call it Stockholm's new living room — easily accomodating 200 cocktail drinkers under douple glassed domes some 25 meters high. From the lounge cathedral, you will enter into the smaller, intimate, intense, slightly surreal shrine of the glamorous Golden Bar.

You who have followed this website will know that the number of highly honorable and obligating commissions to have been entrusted upon BrittonBritton by now has grown quite substantial. No doubt, this one ranks right up there at the top of that list. We've been working on this project since last summer. Shortly, we will be presenting a large number of units that you will be able to follow here on brittonbritton.com.

The first of these is the website www.nobishotel.com, which we aired discretely prior to the press event. On this website, you can read much more about a hotel which will become — we dare promise — Scandinavia's best, coolest and most exciting.

We dare also claim that this project, along with the other ambitious plans for the Norrmalmstorg area (of which you can also read more on www.nobishotel.com) will contribute in a major way to the already commenced process of moving the social and commercial epicenter of downtown Stockholm from nearby Stureplan back to Norrmalmstorg and adjacent Kungsträdården (King's Garden) park — a most intereseting and welcome development which we at BrittonBritton will do our upmost to support in every which way we can.

www.nobishotel.com is a simple "pre-launch" website that still contains a number of flaws and errors soon to be corrected. A brand new generation of the site will of course be launched once we near the opening next December. Until then — have a nice read!

On thing is for certain: we'll meet in Norrmalmstorg in the future!

PS. A great big salute we hoist to our dear old friend Stefano Catenacci and his gastronomic team at the Operakällaren grand eatery which earlier this week was crowned Sweden's number one restaurant — no small honor! — in the overall experience cathegory (food, service and atmosphere combined) in the prestigious White Guide's annual ranking. What a year for Stefano - this embellishment, the Royal wedding in the approaching summer and the opening of our hotel later in the fall. Stefano rides with the Gods right now. It wouldn't surprise us in the slightest if his hot streak continues and into the upcoming week and he will be endowed with his long overdue second Michelin star. DS.

"We want to define a sense of luxury that is Lexus rather than Mercedes or BMW — a luxury for people who want the upmost of comfort and performance, but who don’t want to pay excessive ridiculous money just to flash a showy image"

-Sandro Catenacci, owner and CEO of the Nobis Group

In the spring campaigns for our dearl old clients and partners Rizzo, the shoe and accessories brand store chain, we build on the new, simple communicative manner that we introduced last season, highlighting the product. Two more campaigns will follow later in the spring. This season's models are Josefin E and Mattias B, both from Stockholmsgruppen. The fashion images are photographed by John Scarisbrick and styled by Kattis Lindoff. The still-lives are photographed by Jens Mortensen.

In the spring campaigns for accessories chain Accent, we build on the new communicative manner that we introduced last season, inspired by the style pages of commercial fashion magazines. Three more campaigns will follow later in the spring. The campaigns are photographed by John Scarisbrick and styled by Kattis Lindoff. The models are Karin A and Frida B, both from Stockholmsgruppen.

BrittonBritton has once again produced the annual official Swedish international tourist catalogue Sweden on commission by VisitSweden, the official Swedish tourist authority. The catalogue is published in nine language versions, with a total circulation of about 750,000 copies. As could be expected with the grand Royal wedding comin up, this year's catalogue has a Royal and romantic theme, complete with a personal greeting from the bride to be, our dear Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, to all foreign visitors. View the complete digital version of this catalogue in all language editions on VisitSweden:s award-winning website.

Also, we have once again produced the official international Stockholm guide Stockholm Guide 2010, on commission by Stockholm Vistitors Board, in eight language versions, with a total circulation of approximately one million copies. As usual, the Stockholm Guide is enclosed as an appendix in the Sweden catalogue.  

Monday night will see the opening at Stockholm's classic Sturehof restaurant of the exhibition Primavera, named by Yours Truly, a series of powerful images, to phrase it moderately, by the one and only Mikael Jansson, my dear old friend and Big Brother in that big bad world of fashion – Sweden's greatest fashion photographer ever, in a league of his own, and indeed one of the world's greatest, with a list of clients that includes American, French and Japanese Vogue, Interview, Calvin Klein, Dior, Chloé, Donna Karan, Tod's, and so many more. 

Since we discontinued the publishing of our own magazine Stockholm New back in 2002, Mikael hasn't produced a fashion story of this magnitude here in his homeland, but when Stefano Catenacci, the maitre d' at the legendary The Opera Celler grand eatery, asked him to contribute his own vision of spring for the restaurant's upcoming cookbook, which will feature His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf himself, Mikael accepted, flew in his team from Paris and New York, including Polish star model Anna Jagodzinska, and staged this horrorshow visual drama, inspired by Peter Greenway's "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover", of course with the raw, blood-dripping lamb meat as the spring part of it all, the son of a buther as Mikael is...

Phrasing it mildly once again, the images weren't quite what The Opera Celler or the publishing house Bonniers had expected. That they wouldn't want to touch them even with a ten foot pole, as the American says, was something that Mikael should have been able to figure out with the less noble parts of his body. It's so much just like him to execute his idea all the way out all the same, cost what it will, without worrying all too much about the consequences. I can see the expressions on the faces of ladies at the publishing house when they first laid eyes on these pictures. The Royal Court most likely never got to see them, which was probably just as well for several reasons...

My even older friend Pelle Sturén, patron at Sturehof, has been asking Mikael to exhibit something at his restaurant for many years. As he usually does, Mikael has answered that he would very much like to, the day he has something suitable for the venue. When the Opera Celler and Bonniers very definitely turned the story down, the awaited phone call finally came, when Mikael said that now he did indeed have something "suitable". Pelle and Sturehof flex some gusto when they now go ahead with showing these images originally produced for their competitor. The exhibition has been deemed so controversial that the restaurant has fashioned a curtain seperating the dining room where the images are exhibited from the rest of the large brasserie.

It will be intersesting to follow what kind of response this shall we say alternative spring vision will trigger among the restaurant's guests and others, considering that back in the days when Mikael and I regularly produced large-scale fashion stories together, we were just as regularly faced, in Swedish media and elsewhere, with the most atrocious accusations, for elitism, sexism, promotion of twisted beauty ideals, drug romanticism and god knows what, even nazism and pedophila – all this for images that were considerably more innocent than the ones that Mikael is now showing at Sturehof.

If your Swedish is decent, you can visit the Sturehof website and read the essay I've written for the Primavera exhibition, where I also discuss the fascinating impact of fashion photography and its relationship to other media and art forms. A translated English version will follow.

Then get down and go and see the show, goddamnit, and come back and tell me your opinion about it!

For this present autumn season, we have developed new communicative manners for our clients Accent and Rizzo, both part of the Venue Retail Group, complete with new typographies, new photographic manners and new tonalities.

For Accent, we have introduced an "editorial" manner, remniscent of the front of the book pages in fashion magazines, designed to provide a firm aid for the accessories chain's customers in trends and styling.

The new maner for Rizzo emphasizes the products, also giving the men's collection, which has been fast growing, a bigger role in the brand's communication. Another purpose with the change is to clearify that Rizzo is also a retail chain selling other selected brands of shoes and accessories, in addition to its own.

Hopefully these new communication manners will contribute to further growth and expansion for both brands.

The model images for the campaigns for both brands are photographed by John Scarisbrick and styled by Kattis Lindoff. The product images are photographed by Jens Mortensen.

For weeks now, I've been brooding over this trailer for the "Web Joker" challenge to the upcoming, unbelievably popular Eurovision Song Contest competition that has been pumping on heavy rotation on prime time, before the seven-thirty and nine o'clock news in our Swedish state television.

Two young girls, of the age of shall we say fifteen or so, are sitting on a sofa, lightly dressed, nietly pierced and quite "challenging", singing a song with these lyrics:

"I like girls
I like boys
it's our life
it's not a choice
F-U-C-K
every day
it's a game we like to play
F-F-U-U-C-C-K-K
Gonna eat you alive
Gonna go insane"

Nowhere, in our media or elsewhere, have I seen or heard a single reaction to this rather blunt and straightforward message. I see two possible explanations to this:

1.  We are not becoming like the good ol' US of A in every sense after all. The concept of Swedish Sin is still alive and kicking. Nobody in our state selevision, in the media or in the general television audience sees anything out of the ordinary in two underage girls singing in prime time that they like to play the game of f---king every day, with boys and girls, eating eachother alive and going insane - a message I doubt would be allowed to run for long on prime time on state-owned, tax-financed television in the United States, if there were such a thing.

2.  Our understanding of the English language and capacity of understanding song lyrics, in the television management, in the media and in the general audience, is not quite as advanced as we like to think.

My experience tells me that the second of these alternative explanations is likely to be correct. Say what do you think?