THE GOODS : Gotta Get a Gudrum : What makes a clothing line worth chasing through two continents? Snazzy color combinations, curious prints and unavailability.

Are we crazy, or what?

On a recent Saturday, we were among eight women--friends and colleagues--who raised iced tea glasses to toast a rather buxom, middle-aged Swedish woman whom only one of us had met. Each of us wore one of her designs. The luncheon table was set with place mats and napkins in two of “her” colors, sea green and bright pink, and the cake’s icing mimicked a Gudrun pattern. Even the dog was festooned with a scarf from an old Gudrun outfit.

What kind of clothes would prompt otherwise hypersensible women accustomed to toll-free phone shopping to immerse themselves in the minutiae of foreign currency conversion, Swedish-German language translation and international postage and duty rates? Unusual ones, to say the least.

Gail had the first Gudrun, a Hanukkah gift in 1986 from her mother. An ordinary striped T-shirt at first glance, its color combination--rust, black, gray and purple--patterned pockets, placket lining and cuffs said this is not the Gap or the Limited.

That shirt had come from the Swedish designer’s new Berkeley store, her inaugural U.S. retail and mail-order operation. It was typical of her loose-fitting approach to dresses, sweaters, tops, jackets--all in natural fibers and made to last. Were it not for Gudrun’s colors, curious prints and knack for overlapping patterns--stripes with dots, geometric blocks with squiggles--you might say her stuff was dowdy. These distinctive colors and design details often reappear in new collections, so nothing goes out of style.

Gudrun Sjoden launched her clothing line in 1976 and now has about 100,000 customers, mostly in Scandinavia and northern Europe. Because layering is part of the look, the separates work as well in sunny Southern California as they do in intemperate Sweden. But the Berkeley outlet--and another short-lived one in Palo Alto--eventually succumbed in 1990 to the difficulties of managing a far-flung business.

By then, the ranks of Los Angeles Gudrunites had swelled. Within a year after Gail first turned up in that T, a dozen or so women--all of us then-colleagues at a local research institute--were ordering from Gudrun’s Berkeley store. Each season’s catalogue was passed around, much discussed and noticeably dog-eared.

With the Berkeley shop closed, and its number disconnected, the Gudrun loyalists started to get a little crazy. A UCLA professor whom Gail had befriended after spotting her in a Gudrun sweater planned a sabbatical in Sweden so she could stock up. Others combed Berkeley thrift stores for discarded Gudruns. Gail’s mother, who once worked at the Gudrun shop, was more than once offered money by strangers for the Gudruns off her back.

We wanted Gudrun bad.

We wrote to Sweden (Gudrun Sjodens, Box 91731, 120 17 Stockholm) to request a catalogue. No reply. We wrote again. This time a catalogue arrived, along with a handwritten letter advising us that the company would not ship to the United States. So sorry, it said in English.

Frustration hardened into resolve. As professional researchers, surely we could figure a way to get Gudrun. We inventoried our resources: one colleague who spoke Swedish, others who had friends in European cities to which the company might ship, a fax machine, phones, determination.

The phone work paid off. We discovered that while the Swedish outlets would not ship to the States, one of the German stores would. With this news the Gudrun group gathered via E-mail, converting catalogue prices and translating key words and phrases.

A few days later, we faxed a very long order to Germany. A helpful clerk responded within the day, detailing the sizes and colors available. The order was revised, another fax sent and the money wired (no credit cards). We waited.

The day the first package arrived, three months later, was like Christmas. Each of us came by Gail’s office, either to pick up our own order or to admire everyone else’s.

Self-congratulations were in order: We had managed to get the clothes we love, to stop hoarding the fading Gudruns we had and to anticipate the collections ahead. We had discovered that catalogue shopping, often touted as a private experience, can be an opportunity for friendship and shared pleasure.

Would a celebratory lunch, complete with Gudrun-patterned cake, be going too far? Nah. The invitation read: “It wasn’t easy but we did it--we got Gudrun! Please come celebrate our retailing coup!”