This season, the famed Danish designer ponders memory and space travel through a collection that's deliciously weird
Spurred by his current retrospective at the Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Henrik Vibskov has been thinking about memory. Specifically, the Danish designer has been musing on the idea of what he might like to be remembered for. “What is memory? How do you recognise different smells or tastes?” He posits via a voice note he sent over a few days before his CPHFW show. “If you had to travel in space, what would you bring along?”
He references the 1972 Russian epic Solaris, in which space explorers discover a far-off planet covered in water that can unlock distant memories. For today’s show, in an industrial warehouse, neon-filled floatation balloons, stuffed with notes and sheet music, were suspended in the centre of the runway. Time capsules for the future.
Practically, this results in an AW22 collection that is “vintage stuff, mixed with a weird futurism”. Retro elements emerge by way of puffed sleeves and shrunken collars, checked wool coats and grandma florals. Meanwhile, we find a sort of dystopian futurism in the sharply tailored suits. One could imagine a technical lilac knit look, covered in small soft spikes, as standard issue uniforms in some distant reality. Elsewhere, a small round logo presents the designer’s take on a retro space insignia. As Vibskov puts it, “It’s a weird combo.”
“It’s a bit fluffy, because it becomes very philosophical and thoughtful,” Vibskov says.
See the full collection below:
