Cecilie Bahnsen burst onto the Copenhagen Fashion Week scene 10 years ago this month. And today, the designer — one of Copenhagen’s biggest fashion exports — is returning to her home city for a one-off archive show, celebrating the brand’s heritage and its long-standing creative community. Ambitiously, this celebratory showcase will not replace the brand’s usual Paris show, which is taking place on 1 October, or show the same pieces. When I visited the brand’s Copenhagen atelier two days before the show, her team were working on both collections at once.
“Right now, we feel very calm and excited at the same time. It’s been truly amazing being with the team, working with the archive, making sense of it all and looking at all the things we have achieved together,” Bahnsen tells me. “I think it’s important to stop and reflect, and sometimes you only do it in these moments.” To create the Copenhagen collection, Bahnsen and her team took out the archives and placed them in the middle of the studio a few months ago, splicing ideas, fabrics and silhouettes from various collections to create an offering based on past hits. For the show, the brand has flown in its entire board, investors and very important clients (VICs) from around the globe.
