Mona Omar

Mona Omar is a Copenhagen-based art director just starting her career. She began contributing creative direction to the lookbooks for Baserange—a Danish line of sustainably made undergarments and leisurewear basics—after an unexpected encounter with the label’s founder. Over several seasons, she has helped articulate the brand’s progressive aesthetic, which celebrates female comfort and body diversity. Omar, actively inspired by her parents’ East African roots and their quest to improve the world, aims to influence new norms of representation.

To start, tell me a bit about your background. I grew up in the suburbs of Copenhagen, in a family of modern-day rebels. My parents came to Denmark as refugees from Somalia in the ’80s when they were young adults. My father worked for the NGO Save the Children, and my mother is a teacher and the founder of an organization that combats female genital mutilation. As a child, I always wanted to have a “save-the-world’’ kind of