The Story of Koppartrans

In times too distant to remember - 1947 to be precise - the shipping firm Transatlantic and the giant mining concern Stora Kopparberg (est. 1288) formed an oil and gas company. It was to be called Koppartrans, a clever play on the name of the two parent corporations. A huge amount of machinery and equipment was then imported from the United States  to construct in Gothenburg what would become the largest refinery in Sweden.  In September 1949, it was inaugerated with all due pomp and circumstance. Snugg magnate A. Ljunglof had the honour of igniting the perpetual flame from surplus gas. This flame is represented in the Koppartrans logo by the red tounge. The logo, featuring a capital K in the shape of a fire-breathing lion, became one of the best known and most visible signs in Sweden in the 1950s and 60s.

Shell Corporation took over half of Koppartrans in 1959 and all of it four years later, only to dissolve it in the early 1970s. And that seemed to be the end of that. Two decades hence, however, clothing designer Per-Eric Melinder took over the Koppartrans name and logo. His first collection under the imprint appeared in 1998. It was in large measure inspired by the kind of workwear that petrol station personnel at Koppartrans used in the 1950s. Oil industry terminology also dominated the names of this first generation of Koppartrans clothes: Premium, Titan, Oktan and so forth. Subsequently, the company lineage was also symbolized by names of old car models such as Rekord, Camino and Herald.

While Melinder was sketching the intitial collection, his collaborator Anders Jansson was busily setting up a network of potential stores which would fit the Koppartrans concept. Despite, or perhaps because of, this extremely selective targetting of customers, Koppartrans quickly achieved a much greater dissemination and reputation as a brand than its two central figures could have imagined.

Today, Koppartrans features two annual colletions and four minor ones (1&2s) for a total of six, including  a full range of jeans, shirts, t-shirts, jackets, coats, knitwear and underwear. Aside from the ubiquitous, powerful logo,  the Koppartrans legacy,  the lines from the old company, is  preserved in the notion of constant refinement of  a basic material for an ever-expanding range of uses. The distinctive Koppartrans smell remains so to speak. It is an approach that works genealogically rather than thematically, producing unique, encoded pieces rather than examples or representations of some unifying or overarching principle.

Denna historia hittar du på http://www.koppartrans.com/