SEK 1,000 a month. That’s about what a laborer earns after working 12-13 hours a day, six days a week – to sew up Pernilla Wahlgren’s clothing collection for Gekås Ullared.
Expressen’s revelation hit me in the stomach. The pictures are terrible. They show how the textile workers live, in prison-like sheds, where they sleep directly on the ground. Most of the workers are women.
Pernilla Wahlgren launched her new collection for Gekås Ullared on International Women’s Day
On International Women’s Day, Pernilla Wahlgren launched yet another collection for Ullared. She was on site at the department store taking selfies with fans.
The Express writes that Pernilla’s clothing collections for Gekås Ullared have sold for SEK 70 million.
When Expressen confronted Pernilla, and there at Gekås on March 8, on International Women’s Day, asked how she thought about the workers’ wages, she answered:
“I hope that these are people who are hopefully happy because they are getting a salary and have a job and the opposite is that they would be even worse off”.
Launching your clothing collection on International Women’s Day is nothing short of mockery. A clothing collection that is made by mostly women in what looks like slave-like conditions.
Pernilla Wahlgren’s comment is gut-wrenching
The problem here is not that Pernilla probably did not have full insight into how the textile workers are doing. She must have trusted the Gekås Ullared old men and women, and presumably thought that everything was as it should be. Should she have known better? Perhaps.
But to reply that she hopes they “are happy because they have a salary” is unworldly, bigoted and misogynistic.
Pernilla herself has earned millions of kroner from her clothes, and lives a life of complete luxury. Which of course she has every right to do, she is one of Sweden’s hardest working women in showbiz.
But it will be macabre, almost Marie Antoinette-like, when Pernilla, in light of Expressen’s revelation, continues to update on Instagram as if nothing has happened.
There are sunny pictures from Marbella, press lunches, paid collaborations, advertising for her beauty brand, bubbly and truffle pasta. A large part of it was probably paid for by money that Pernilla has earned from her collection for Gekås Ullared.
Pernilla Wahlgren’s followers have questions, they are disappointed and pissed off and demand answers. But they get none from Pernilla Wahlgren. She carries on with everyday life as if nothing has happened.
Something that is not particularly flattering for a person who is one of Sweden’s most popular artists and television profiles, and who will soon take a place on SVT as program manager for Allsång på Skansen.
Nor Glenn Stromberg or Marie SernehoLt – whose collections for Ullared are also produced in the same factory – have been particularly chatty about Expressen’s revealing reportage.
On Instagram, Marie Serneholt instead advertises the spring rush running race.
“The spring rush is a perfect investment in your health, you get, among other things: A lovely evening with an incredible atmosphere together with only girls!”, she writes.