AMK Atelier founder Maria Gunnarsson wants the denim industry to stop and smell the roses—literally and figuratively.
The Amsterdam-based creative studio supports brands in technical design, visual merchandising and sustainable solutions including projects involving upcycling, recycling, and natural dyeing. Through workshops, AMK helps designers with creating base fit blocks, size grading and sewing instruction. The studio also welcomes students and other groups to learn how to mend, repair and dye denim.
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The atelier is a hybrid of Gunnarsson’s own experiences. Though a slow fashion designer at heart, she has years of experience at commercial brands and understands the business of making and selling jeans.
She weaves her love for nature into many of the projects that she takes on. In 2023 she partnered with Cone Denim to create Wander, a capsule collection of ’80s-inspired gorpcore constructions made with the mill’s mental health awareness selvedge denim. The collection highlighted the therapeutic benefits of spending time in nature. This year, she regrouped with Cone for The City Farmers Project, a year-long initiative that will have Gunnarsson design contemporary denim workwear for six young farmers working on a biological farm on the edge of Amsterdam. The AMK team will visit the farmers to learn about their work and see how it’s reflected in the aging of their garments. Each season will be documented on film and through interviews.
Gunnarsson likens her designs to “social fashion” or fashion that the wearer feels strongly connected with. Many of the people who join her repair workshops share this sentiment with garments they’ve inherited or had for a long time. Others, she said, are students who are buying new and cheap clothing because they don’t have the money to invest in quality pieces, but they have a sustainable mindset and want to change how they consume fashion.
Born and raised on a farm in Sweden, Gunnarsson said she learned early how to “create what she needed” and to mend and repair clothing. At 16, she moved to Stockholm to study fashion and garment technology, learning patternmaking by cutting jeans apart and piecing them together. Her graduation collection? Upcycled denim. “I realized that denim has so many different details and shapes, so the love story started there,” she said. Meanwhile, side jobs as a salesperson and visual merchandiser for denim retailers exposed Gunnarsson to the trials and tribulations of finding perfect-fitting jeans. “I was working in a fitting room with a lot of people and families coming in to buy their jeans and I learned so much about bodies and what kind of brands fit certain personalities and body types,” she said.
An internship at Levi’s Vintage in Amsterdam turned into a full-time job as a garment technologist for the premium label. “I went straight into a very dreamy situation after school to work in a premium department of Levi’s, LVC where there were amazing people. I got to work with very talented and creative people from design, product development and marketing. It was very fun and crazy,” she said.
When Levi’s moved its global offices to San Francisco, Gunnarsson made the transition to a much smaller but just as ambitious label, Kings of Indigo, in 2014. She said working for the Dutch brand was eye opening as it allowed her to see the industry outside of the Levi’s bubble where there was the flexibility and budget to be creative. As the “queen of product” at Kings of Indigo for five years, she had to be hands-on with materials and production, in the factories and at the wash houses and sewing rooms in Tunisia. She also worked directly with mills like Calik Denim in Turkey to innovate fabrics. “Kings of Indigo is where I got to be really nerdy,” she said.
Gunnarsson launched AMK Atelier in 2017 as a side hustle and creative outlet to explore denim design outside the traditional seasonal cycle of a brand. Two years later, it became her full-time job focused on three pillars: bespoke collections, consulting, and education. “I chose to build my company AMK Atelier on my characteristics and values,” she said.
As a coach to designers, she sees how the pressure to get products onto the market quickly before perfecting the fit or understanding the technical aspects of the fabric affects returns and overproduction. “I always compare it to cooking—you have to make sure that your fridge is full of good ingredients,” she said about executing a successful and sustainable garment. “The knowledge gap and sometimes naiveness from brands to go on without taking time to really think of the best options is a waste of time. We can’t do that anymore,” she said.
It is for this reason that Gunnarsson plans to grow the educational element of her business through more consulting. The personal connection of coaching and the ability to spread knowledge is the only way to make a bigger sustainable impact, she said.
“For me, it’s not about the riches. I feel rich by filling the days with work that fulfills me and that really makes it quite a nice experience to have this atelier. I have been lucky to build the brand AMK Atelier on what I am good at,” she said.
