As you eat pickled herring off your Lack while enjoying Antichrist, do you ever stop to consider where they all came from? Yes, Scandinavia—stomping grounds of the undisputed masters of the Allen key, social welfare, cheekbone structure, and movies that make you want to hang yourself. But most importantly, the region’s gift to the rest of the planet is clean, effortless style.

“Brevity is the soul of wit,” said Polonius, the famous adviser to the Danish royal family. And, as its name suggests, that’s the guiding aesthetic for Danish brand minimum.

What started as a retail shop in Aarhus, Denmark’s second-largest city, has since ridden the H&M–triggered tsunami of hype and gone international.

“We’re not a typical logo brand. It’s more about the look, how we put things together, and the shapes and fittings,” explained Claus Lyngholm Sørensen, minimum’s co-owner, on a recent visit to Vancouver. “It’s practical and a fashion item.”

Like most Scandinavian fashion, the complete men’s and women’s lines feature functional pieces with nice cuts and muted colour palettes. So what you get are clothes that not only are good for everyday wear, but also allow you to look stylish without stepping outside your comfort zone or seeming like you’re trying too hard.

A testament to minimum’s diversity, and Scandinavian fashion’s ubiquity, is the fact that you can find it within arm’s reach of a pour-over coffee at boutiques like the Block (350 West Cordova Street) and Still Life (2315 Main Street), as well as near an Orange Julius in suburban malls at J2 and Plenty (both various locations).

“I would say that if you went to Copenhagen now and you spent half a day at a café looking at people, you would see that they are really fashion-forward,” said the amiable resident of Legoland. “The Scandinavian look is global.”

Vancouver-born, New York–based stylist Toyo Tsuchiya concurs. Though the multiple Os in her name are sadly without ligatures or umlauts, she knows a thing or two about stylish, minimal looks. This was evident when she outfitted Tegan and Sara for their performance at this year’s Oscars.

“I see something more ballsy in the Scandinavian designers than I do with North American ones,” says the admitted admirer of well-dressed Swedish vampires, by phone. “Even though it’s super minimalistic, I feel like they still take a jump every season and are constantly building to make the clothes better and make their fashion its own entity.”

Aside from the clothes looking good, a similar lifestyle is one reason Tsuchiya gives for why Scandinavian style works especially well in Vancouver.

“When I was in Stockholm on a job, I kept thinking, ‘This is like Vancouver. It’s beautiful, super healthy, and the people look great, just like people in Vancouver do,’ ” she recalls while giving a nod to her former city, a wildly uncharacteristic move for someone who fled to the Big Apple.

Brands she recommends include Denmark’s Soulland, which you can grab at the Board of Trade (227 Union Street), and Sweden’s Acne Studios and Filippa K, which are both available at gravitypope tailored goods (2203 West 4th Avenue).

“Acne is the perfect model for everything. It’s always a simple shape, then a detail makes it different,” Tsuchiya explains. “It’s the same equation that they have with music. It’s minimal, but there’s a detail to it that makes it special.”

Oh, that’s right. The Scandinavians are better at music than us, too. Maybe throw on an ABBA record instead of a Lars von Trier movie if you’d rather dance than hang yourself after enjoying that brined fish.