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Sighsten Herrgård, (1943 - 1989), was a Swedish fashion designer. He was one of the first victims of AIDS to go public in Sweden, "giving AIDS a face".
Sighsten Herrgård got his fashion education at Beckmans School of Design in Stockholm and at the pattern development academies in Stockholm and Copenhagen. The start of his career was in 1966 when he won the Courtauld International Design Competition with a collection of unisex clothing. In the 1970s Herrgård etablished internationally in Paris and North America, he also started a company in Stockholm and worked with television, magazines and shows.
On 30 July 1987 Sighsten Herrgård held a press conference, stating "I'm going to die. I have AIDS. I might only have months left, but I want to die with dignity" - it was an emotional meeting.
At this time in Sweden people were still very unaware about the risks of the disease. Sighsten talked a lot about this with his doctors and decided to tell the public about it, "AIDS needs to get a face". At the time of the press conference, doctors only gave him months, a year at most, to live, but he lived for another two years. In 1989 he died, in calm and with dignity. "Everybody needs to change their way of living" - the words of a trendsetter.sv:Sighsten Herrgård