Come together: The AW25 Copenhagen Fashion Week preview

With people starting to refer to Copenhagen as “the fifth fashion week,” it’s safe to say that Nordic fashion is carving out a place on the map. The region is known for brands that are adept at world-building and delivering value for the price. With people questioning the merit and meaning of luxury, now is the time for Denmark and its neighbours to “own” the middle market, it would seem. Yet it’s not as straightforward as that, as evidenced by the shuttering of two popular Danish brands (di)vison and Saks Potts. Business is no easier or harder, it seems, for those aiming for a “contemporary” audience than any other. Note the reconfiguration of 3.1 Phillip Lim in New York and the closing of Eytys in Stockholm.

Yet I’m going into Copenhagen Fashion Week full of hope and anticipation. One of the draws for me is the clear connection to place and purpose – lifestyle, if you will. The organisers in Denmark have always succeeded in making the city itself a chief protagonist in the goings-on, and it has more sireny-charm that even the Little Mermaid who sits in the harbour. And the weather keeps things interesting; it changes rapidly and you really do have to think how to dress for it.

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There are unfamiliar names on the lineup. ALIS is a streetwear remake of a skatewear brand founded in Christiana in 1996 with Tobias Birk Nielsen taking the creative lead. CMMN SWDN’s Saif Bakir and Emma Hedlund, who cut their teeth in Paris and London before founding their own label in Malmö, Sweden, are making their runway debut at CPHFW and launching womenswear in the process. Their fellow Swedes at Filippa K will have a presentation in their store. Adding to this cross-region camaraderie, Iceland’s 66°North will have an activation as well.

Personally, I think we need to start thinking about new things in more relative terms. All of the collections will be new, regardless of when or where the brand was founded. Astrid Andersen and Anne Sofie Madsen, who both came up in fashion in the 2010s, are proof of the value of experience. Andersen returned to the fray last season with Stel, a brand that will build upon itself (rather than switching gears every few months) with innovative and functional wardrobe pieces. And Madsen, who put her label on pause in 2017, is dipping her toe back in with an off-schedule presentation promising couture-like touches. New/old, as far as I can see it, is the order of the day; and the ability to perceive time (and by extension novelty) free from a forward, progressive linearity, seems somehow freeing. The grounding that regionality lends CPHFW feels special in an “everything, everywhere, all at once” world.

Copenhagen Fashion Week’s NewTalent program – which aims to support emerging Nordic talents in business less than five years with presentations and mentoring – was launched in 2022, and is now in full swing with designers “graduating” and new ones enrolling. New to the scheme this season are Bonnetje’s Anna Myntekær and Yoko Maja Hansen who, you might say, are getting right down to business. As the designers’ practice is centred around upcycled suiting, the most traditional of office uniforms, they are inclined to be work obsessed. Yet as the pair de- and reconstruct these garments, they bring to them an element of eroticism. These competing tendencies, towards order and chaos, coverage and exposure, will come together in a show presented in an old office space. The design and paraphernalia of corporate enclaves are a new subject of fascination for Hansen and Myntekær and their collaborators, who will create a worklife-inspired scentscape and soundtrack.

Related: Ganni's Class of 2025: The new designers to take note of this Copenhagen Fashion Week

I like to say Copenhagen is the main protagonist in its fashion week. Among all of the designers on the schedule, few have as strong a connection to space as Caro Edition's Caroline Bille Brahe. Last season she held a pop-up fashion show in the parking lot behind her shop. For autumn she'll continue to keep things close to home, presenting her "travelling circus" (clowns and the like are favourite motifs) in a space adjacent to her HQ.

Baum und Pferdgarten’s Rikke Baumgarten and Helle Hestehave have tapped local artist Lulu Kaalund – who had a viral moment when someone filmed her crocheting front-row at a Ganni show – to make pieces for their autumn collection. The title of Baum und Pferdgarten’s new lineup is heartbeats, and Kaalund’s patterns, which have been described as psychedelic, could also be read as freeform cardiagrams that register her observations of the world. B und P has been in her view for a long time. “I’m thankful to be part of this show,” said the artist in a written exchange. “I first learned about [the brand] when I was 13 or 14. My friend had a young, cool mom who was friends with Rikke and Helle. They made a T-shirt with the mussel pattern from Royal Copenhagen – I think it was 2004/5 – and it was the coolest thing I had ever seen!” B und P recently marked 25 years and Kaalund says she’s been inspired by their continuous reinventions.

COMMN SWDN’s Saif Bakir and Emma Hedlund, who are based in Malmo, Sweden, are doubling down for autumn, combining their CPHFW debut with the launch of womenswear – a project long in the making. “We want to invite people to our world,” says Hedlund. “We are a husband and wife duo designing this, and I think it makes perfect sense that there’s both a women’s and men’s collection.”

In a first for CPHFW, Stine Goya is picking up sticks and presenting at the Kunsten museum in Aalborg, in the North of Denmark, where she was invited to curate an installation. “This is a one-time and golden opportunity,” says Goya. “Fashion Week is closely linked to Copenhagen, so moving our fall 2025 show to the countryside seems almost disruptive and requires some very good reasons – and they are there, I believe. It’s nice to be able to show people other parts of the country. Denmark is more than Copenhagen.” Showgoers will… Says Cecilie Thorsmark, CPHFW’s CEO: “It’s a rare opportunity that highlights the unique potential—and value—of fashion intersecting with art, architecture, and design, and in turn underlining its cultural value.”

Related: Step inside the opening of the Stine Goya-curated show at Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg

Expanding the season’s geography lesson, the Icelandic outerwear brand 66°North, celebrating 99 years, will host an open-to-the-public installation and show its new season’s wares in honour of its 99th birthday.

Autumn 2025 promises to be a sonic treat. “Music has always been part of my way of communicating,” says Astrid Andersen who relaunched Stel, a brand delivering “tailoring that you can skate in, denim you can dance in, shirting you can travel in,” last season with an upbeat presentation. This time around she’s planned a salon-style show with a performance by Hillari, a Norwegian-Filipina artist who, Andersen noted, “makes beautiful music that makes you put your shoulders down and [makes you]slightly mesmerised.” Expect the beat at Nicklas Skovgaard to be as poppy as one of his buoyant bubble skirts. Danish design darling has invited Fame Hunter, a local band known for their infectious, indie-sleaze-inspired tunes (and style), to play.

“I actually never really closed my brand, I just rearranged my way of working,” says Anne Sofie Madsen. A graduate of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Madsen worked with John Galliano at Christian Dior and with Lee Alexander McQueen before she decided to make her own way in the business in 2011. Six years later she hit pause, choosing to prioritise her own life and pursue her art practice; along the way she became a professor at the Scandinavian Academy of Fashion Design. Now she’s slowly easing back into her brand. “I’m sort of returning to a lot of ideas I developed previously,” she says, only she’s approaching them from a new perspective. In an off-schedule presentation Madsen will present fantastical elements mixed with tailored pieces that flirt with fashion history. To mark her return, we’ll be adding some archival shows of hers to the Vogue Runway archive.

Italo Thai, a 28-seat restaurant beloved by the fashion crowd, has made way, at the same location, for UNO (a drinks cafe) and DUO, a restaurant co-owned by Martin Gjesing of the creative agency Moon and Soulland’s Jacob Kampp Berliner. What’s new? An expanding selection of provisions like olive oil and espresso beans to take away. Holding steady is the menu of Italian favourites, and fashion people’s propensity for the place. During CPHFW, Diemme will use the space, and it is also where Amalie and Cecilie Moosgaard (the twins behind Lié Studio) will introduce their collaboration with the Japanese denim brand Upper Hights.

Related: An exclusive sneak peek at A. Roege Hove’s AW25 collection ahead of CPHFW

One of CPH’s cutest couples, Anton Thiemka (aka Space Idol) and Nina Marker, walked Caro Editions together last season, bringing some local flavour and kærlighed (love) to the runway. With Valentine’s Day around the corner, we hope they’ll repeat the performance for autumn.

Another cross-Nordic activation has been dreamed up by Silas Adler, formerly of Soulland, and Tom Botwid from Malmö’s Poetic Collective skate brand. Together they have formed Artifical, a platform designed to connect skate culture with fashion, art, and design. Working with Niko June, a Danish design company, New Balance, and New Balance Numeric, a site-specific ramp has been made that will be set up at The Lab, where Cecilie Bahnsen’s office is located. This sounds like a scenario not unlike the one Avril Lavigne sings about in “Sk8er Boi.”