the source of all that SVEA logo stuff

[cimorene]

Today bluesbell and I took each other shopping. See, I am in the pre-shopping phase of getting a nice cocktail-formal dress for Wax to wear at my cousin's (and any other) wedding. I can't leave her to do it, because she just won't; and shopping with her is difficult or impossible because she gets bored and wants to quit after an incredibly short time. So Bell took me to Element, an overpriced preppy boutique selling more of the same United Colors of Benetton/Gant/posh department store shit, except when we walked in, there were actually three women including a clerk conversing fluently in Swedish, and in the back room two actual Swedish women from Sweden. "I think we've accidentally come into a Swedish-Speaking Better Folk shop," I whispered to Bell, and she said she knew that.

But wow! Because I have never been to such a place outside of the Swedish Club. "Swedish Speaking Better Folk" is a Finnish-language phrase for a somewhat racist Finnish stereotype against Swedish-speaking Finns - that they're all rich, spoiled country club brats. Statistically this is not true of the majority of Swedish-speaking Finns at all, only of a slightly higher proportion than Finns (a few percentage points). The vast majority of the snobby upper class in Finland is Finnish-speaking: most of the leading families have Swedish and Finnish-speaking branches. So, for example, when shiroi_chi says that she doesn't go into posh department store Stockmann because it's a Swedish-speaker store, this impression is false; the store is a big, country-wide chain and the vast majority of its employees and customers are Finnish-speaking. It wouldn't even be possible for a store to become that big subsisting primarily on Swedish-speaking customers. But evidently it was our lucky day to catch the shop on a day when someone was visiting from Sweden, and apparently at least one of the employees was a Swedish-speaker. I suppose that for a boutique it actually would be possible to remain kind of part of the ghetto...

Comments

[bluesbell.livejournal.com]

Hee hee. My black skinny jeans are from Element, but that's the only thing I've ever bought there.

[morningfine]

Oh, I was just going to ask if you still wanted to go shopping and maybe do it tomorrow, since the deadline that was the reason I didn't want to go today is not going to happen and I might as well spend tomorrow doing something fun. But maybe you've done you shopping now?

And... I actually had a diatribe to go with the svenskatalande bättre folk thing, but figured it's probably something I need to think about before opening my mouth. Just guessing from the knee-jerk need to go WHAT NO at it.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Europe. I love thee.