3 min read

You may be wondering what “lagom” means, where it comes from and how to actually say it. This blog post is all about why I named my brand Lagom Leather.

Lagom is a Swedish word that doesn’t actually have a direct translation into English. It conveys the art of having ‘just the right amount’. The word describes the balance between ‘not too much’ and ‘not too little’. I chose this word as a nod to my Swedish heritage (I am 3/4 Swedish) and because I felt it encompassed what I wanted my brand do be. Correct pronunciation doesn’t come easy. American’s tend to want to say “lay-gom” but it is actually pronounced “lah-gom”. You can think of it as saying “ahhhh” but with an L.

I incorporate the meaning of lagom into my designs. Keeping things simple and not overcomplicating designs is my style. I try to give my products just the right amount of simple beauty while remaining practical and useful.

The meaning behind lagom is also important to my brand’s regenerative mission. I created Lagom Leather to contribute to the conversation of regenerative agriculture and to help give the land a voice in the marketplace. In agriculture, humans have gone to extremes of disturbing the land either too much or doing nothing at all. Industrial/conventional agriculture including tilling, using pesticides and fertilizers, feed lots, etc. is an example of how humans have done “too much”. We have interfered with nature through agriculture too much resulting in environmental destruction. On the other hand, it was recently believed that livestock were the cause of desertification. This led to the decision to remove livestock form the land and to leave it alone. Here we were doing “too little”.

Through the work of people such as Allan Savory, it is now becoming widely recognised that there is balance and a way to manage livestock holistically. It involves listening to, observing and working with nature to manage grasslands. The results of holistic management and mimicking nature are soil sequestration, increased productivity, increased biodiversity, and improved social and economic well being. It’s just the right amount of human intervention while allowing nature to do its thing. It’s lagom.

The word lagom can also describe the extent to which livestock trample and disturb the soil. No disturbance and too much disturbance are both detrimental. Whereas, moving livestock across the land the way herds would in the presence of predators ensures the soil is trampled “just the right amount”.

If you enjoyed this blog post and want to dive deeper into regenerative agriculture and the ideas I mentioned in this post I recommend listening to Allan Savory’s Ted Talk here.

just the right amount.

meet the maker.