Mads Nørgaard

Mads Norgaard - Copenhagen traces its retail lineage to 1944, when Mads Norgaard's grandfather, Matthes Mathias, opened a shop on Stroget, Copenhagen's main pedestrian street. Mads' father, Jorgen, took over the business in 1959 and, with his wife Ellen, turned a struggling fabric retailer into a shop attuned to the youth culture and women's-liberation movements of the 1960s and '70s. Mads Norgaard himself, born 1961, opened his own menswear shop in 1986, initially selling only his own small collection before expanding into womenswear - the founding date the brand now uses officially, making Mads the family's third generation of Copenhagen retailers and designers. The brand's defining visual signature is its striped T-shirt. Today the company operates its own stores in Copenhagen, Aarhus, and Berlin in addition to the original Stroget location.