The Founder

My name is Trude Askjem.

I studied fashion design at ESMOD International in Paris.

In 2003 I founded SADONI - a Norwegian bridal house I designed, built and ran for twenty years. It began as a tiny shop behind the royal palace in Oslo and grew into an international brand carried by retailers in more than 15 countries from Europe to Japan and United States. I showed my collections at European Bridal Week in Essen, Si Sposa in Italy and the White Gallery in London. Among the women I dressed was Princess Märtha Louise of Norway.

In 2017 I opened my own atelier in Latvia. I did it because I wanted to know the hands that sewed every gown, and where every meter of fabric came from. That decision taught me what kind of company I want to run for the rest of my working life - small, traceable, made by people I know.

Then I stopped. For a year I made no wedding dresses at all.

I thought I was leaving bridal. It turned out I was leaving the weight of it - the shop, the seasons, the twenty gowns a year, the long list of retailers, all the machinery I had built around the part I actually loved.

When I took that away, what was left was still there. It was calling me back. The design. The fabric. The woman standing in front of the mirror - finding herself in a dress.

VITVEIS is that, without the rest of it.

I am still based in Norway, and I design everything myself. The clothes are made in our atelier in Riga, which I have called my second home since 2017 - where the herbs grow in the meadows, which is another story, and the beginning of VITVEIS Botanicals.

Your designer - Trude Askjem