“The most Swedish I’ve ever felt”: Edvin Ryding takes us inside H&M’s LA festival, including Robyn's standout set

Wednesday evening in Downtown Los Angeles, Edvin Ryding had a deeply Swedish experience; at H&M&LA, a one-off festival hosted by H&M, the actor saw Robyn live for the very first time. “It felt historical to see Robyn,” says Ryding when he rings me from the airport before he catches a flight home to Stockholm. “She’s such a Swedish icon.” Just hours earlier, a video of Ryding and pals Felix Sandman and Wilma Lidén belting along to 'Dancing On My Own’ hit the internet. Ryding confirms it was the no-contest highlight of an evening that also included killer performances by Doechii (“She was so, so good,” he says) and Jamie xx. “It’s probably the most Swedish I’ve ever felt,” says Ryding. “I felt like, ‘This is our moment’.”

Given that the festival – which brought out the likes of Mondo Duplantis, Desiré Inglander, Tyla, Amelia Gray and her mum, Lisa Rinna – was an elaborate celebration of H&M’s spring/summer 2025, Ryding walked the black carpet in a customised look from the collection. Breaking from traditional festival attire, he looked utterly dapper in a wide-lapelled dove grey suit. “They were actually quite extremely bootcut pants, which I really like,” he notes. “It felt dramatic.” Working with stylist Paul Edwards, who was also behind Ryding’s viral 2025 Oscars look, Ryding played up the '70s decadence of the look by way of a shirt with an exaggerated collar, chunky boots and a glittering brooch.

The festival itself was beyond Ryding’s expectations. “I don’t really know what I expected, but it wasn’t this,” he says. “We walked in and it felt like entering another world – a really cool, industrial, Mad Max-fashion-world mashup. Though he and his crew certainly got in the spirit and let loose, Ryding is, generally speaking, not much of a festival guy. “Lately I’ve been keeping to myself a bit more and avoiding these big crowds,” he says. A fair point; though Young Royals, the Netflix series that made Ryding a bona fide superstar, has wrapped, the fanfare around him hasn’t died down. That’s to say attending a festival, especially here in Sweden, might not be the chillest experience.

Related: “It’s just about showing the world that I’m not Simon”: Omar Rudberg on life after ‘Young Royals’

Los Angeles, meanwhile, is starting to feel more and more like a second home to Ryding, whose big Hollywood breakout, 28 Years Later, hits theatres in June. “I’ve had some day-to-day experiences here now,” he says. “I’ve driven around all over town, I’ve crashed my car here – I’ve experienced a lot of L.A.” Still, this trip offered an LA first: a visit to Venice Beach. “We met this really cool artist-slash-prop master and he was making this art called, ‘Let’s find our way back to love’,” says Ryding. “He was like, ‘This is my reaction to whatever the f*** is going on right now,’ and I’m like, ‘This is Venice in a nutshell’.”

Another distinctly LA moment came that evening, when H&M brought Ryding and his crew for dinner at Chateau Marmont. “We had been talking about Breaking Bad that day and then who walks in? Aaron Paul who plays Jesse Pinkman,” he says. “We got gassed up.”

It was a packed three days for Ryding and his Swedish crew. “Jet lag has been a constant through this trip,” he says. “But we pushed through yesterday – we pushed through because we wanted to see Robyn and Doechii and experience the festival. But we left shortly after Doechii and went back to the hotel and I crashed, which was nice.” As if on cue, I hear Wilma handing Ryding a coffee on the other end of the line (“For me?! Thank you!” he says) and we bid farewell so Ryding can catch his flight. He’ll return to Stockholm a bit more Hollywood, but a bit more Swedish, too.