Why Do Americans Want to Dress Like Swedes?

Toteme, the fashion label, is not a word. But it comes from one.

“I had the idea of ‘Totem,’” said Karl Lindman, who co-founded the company 10 years ago with his wife, Elin Kling. They married the same year.

“One of the meanings of the word ‘totem’ — and there are a lot — is a symbol for the like-minded,” Mr. Lindman, 42, said.

But Ms. Kling, 41, thought the name sounded too “masculine.” She was making clothes for women. So she suggested adding an “e,” elongating and softening the pronunciation. The addition also gave symmetry to a square-shaped monogram that Mr. Lindman, then the design director of Interview magazine, had been developing.

“It’s our take on the word,” he said. As I sat across from the couple at a long wooden table in the backyard of their Hamptons, N.Y., home, I wondered if there was a Swedish word for “totem.” Mr. Lindman paused for a moment: “It’s the same.”

Mr. Lindman and Ms. Kling are both Swedish, based in Stockholm, but they come to Long Island every July. Their shingled home in Amagansett, purchased about three years ago, is as close as you can get to the beach without living on it.

Yet they should not be confused for Hamptons types; they are walking advertisements for Toteme, a brand often referred to in fashion media as “minimalist.” That word makes Ms. Kling wrinkle her nose.