August and Jakob are co-founders of ASKET, a Swedish menswear brand on a mission to end overconsumption and add value back into the apparel system. Their approach is simple: do away with seasonal collections that only fuel a cycle of fast-consumption habits, instead replacing it with a single permanent collection of mindfully produced, quality and timeless garments — designed to last a lifetime, not 5 washes.
Which three books would you recommend?
Sapiens: A Brief History of HumankindYuval Noah Harari
Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Barack Obama all recommend this book – and with good reason. It packs the awe-inspiring human history into just 443 pages and illustrates how concepts such agriculture, language and science (truths that we take for granted everyday), have helped to shape the extraordinary collective society that we are today. It showed us that every decision we make can go a long way in shaping society and the values it embodies as well as showing us that decisions made around topics such as climate change and technology can and will a have lasting legacy – it’s up to us how we want to shape things going forward.
Any book by Astrid LindgrenAstrid Lindgren
Lindgren's most famous character is Pippi Longstockings - a feisty almost anti-authoritarian girl with a strong sense of justice, who sticks up for children and animals. Pippi became a role model for so many Swedes - when the owner of a Punk Cafe in Stockholm was threatened with closure, he pulled together posters with the caption 'Join us in this fight - we have learned from Pippi Longstockings'. But Lindgren is not only loved for her books, she was also an influential voice on everyday issues, such as violence against children. She played a huge part in Sweden becoming the first country to ban the smacking of children in 1979.
Let My People Go SurfingYvon Chouinard
It's both entertaining and inspiring. As the founder of Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard is a self-proclaimed anti-business businessman. He gave us the confidence to launch a business that challenges the status quo and taught us to maintain a constantly evolving outlook—that profit is not the measure of success, but rather building a business that creates a positive impact.