When you meet Saskia Dijkstra, she usually wears a cashmere sweater from her own brand, extreme cashmere. And when you see how she keeps stroking the fluffy sleeves and caressing the fibers during the conversation, firstly you want to try on such a sweater immediately and secondly you want to know how this love came about. We meet her on a cold Berlin winter’s day in Andreas Murkudis’ shop. Outside, passers-by brave the wind: ideal weather for a conversation about one of the warmest materials that nature has to offer.
“There was never a sweater that I liked,” says Dijkstra. She has been working in the cashmere business since 1997. After quickly dropping out of law school, she went into the fashion industry. She lived in Hong Kong for a long time, commuted between the Chinese manufacturers and the Netherlands in the sales department of a cashmere manufacturer and recruited large designer brands such as Jil Sander and Agnès B. as customers. But in all that time, a sweater never really appealed to her. “There were always trade-offs. Some customers ordered looser yarns in order to be able to lower the price, because with cashmere the quality goes hand in hand with the thickness of the yarn.” Sometimes the dyes weren’t her cup of tea either. So one day she decided to design a sweater herself that didn’t compromise on quality or design.
Saskia Dijkstra went into the fashion industry after dropping out of law studies.
:
Image: PR/Karla Otto
Clothing for all ages
She took the prototype home and showed it to the family. “My boyfriend at the time was there, my mother, my stepson, and they all wanted this sweater,” says Dijkstra. That’s how she came up with the concept: cashmere clothes for every age, every gender, every body type. Each part comes in exactly one size.
But what is the ideal body type to design a sweater for? Dijkstra laughs: “We don’t think about the body when designing, it’s the other way around. We make beautiful sweaters and customers choose what suits them. Depending on how you feel on the day, you want to wear different things, sometimes you feel like something body-hugging, sometimes you need an oversized pullover to wrap yourself in.” From time to time, however, the suggestion comes directly from the environment. “We realized we were missing a size plus because there was a young woman in my office who didn’t fit any of our models. Six weeks later we had a suitable piece for her as well.”
The designer rejects changing collections. “We prefer to keep adding new models to our inventory. I see it as a large collection that is always available.” In the seven years since its establishment, a number of pieces have accumulated. Only what turned out to be a failure, what did not stand up to critical scrutiny in the long term, was sorted out. The existing designs are often supplemented with new colours. Today, customers can choose from around 300 models. The pieces do not have a label, but each piece has a thread of the other colors in which the model is available on the cuff.
Saskia Dijkstra still runs her label herself. In her Amsterdam studio, she has gathered a creative team around her that takes care of everything from design to marketing to distribution. During Fashion Week, they travel to Paris together to present the new additions to their collection. The employees who are in the Murkudis shop that day are all wearing extreme cashmere pieces and show how the idea of uniform sizes can be implemented: what one wears as a long skirt, the other wears as a strapless dress pulled and combined with a light cotton shirt. Another has a baggy, oversized sweater tamed with a belt at the waist. One of the men wears a pair of cashmere jogging pants that were added to the range during the Corona pandemic.
Dijkstra has managed to transform cashmere from the outdated yarn that you might have worn at elite American universities into a casual and comfortable material for a younger target group. “It is important to me to reach young people, because this generation grew up very differently. When I was growing up, there was no Zara, no fast fashion,” says Dijkstra. “We passed the things of the older siblings through. They could stand it too, because my mother paid attention to the quality of things. And it’s not that young people don’t appreciate quality – they just have to get to know it first.”
The 57-year-old designer can talk for hours about the quality of her cashmere. Because that’s how she justifies the prices of her pieces. The cheapest sweaters cost 275 euros in the online shop. “We use a special yarn that’s hard to come by, it comes from my suppliers in Inner Mongolia.” divided by length. “The longer the yarn, the higher the quality, the thicker the thread and the heavier the sweater in the end. That is why we only buy the white and longest wool threads. And of course they are the most expensive.” Nevertheless, given the quality, the prices are reasonable. “After all, the sweaters should last a lifetime.” That’s why each piece also comes with care instructions – the clothes are machine washable. You also get a comb to prevent pilling.