CPHFW SS26 / What To Remember

Our reportage from Copenhagen Fashion Week this season

This season in Copenhagen unfolded with fragility and unfinished edges, in spaces that felt unstable and charged. Clothes carried traces of other lives, altered and worn, shifting between structure and collapse. Softness appeared across the week, weighted with tension and marked by the possibility of fracture. Pleats opened like confessions, slips and lace disrupted tailoring, sequins broke apart the light. The mood was fragmented, lingering in memory, intimacy, and unease, with tenderness shown as raw, unsettled, and sharp.

Bonnetje “Breakable”

Bonnetje’s SS26 show cracked open the shell of a suit to reveal something startlingly soft beneath. In a space laced with shattered glass, fizzy pink champagne, and a chill that clung like perfume, the collection blurred the edges between control and collapse. Tailoring, once structured and guarded, was tugged loose, made raw with slips, lace, and heirloom fabrics that looked like they’d lived another life. Pleats unfolded like secrets, linings peeked out like afterthoughts. It felt like the clothes had been inherited and altered, but never truly fit—haunted by the hands that touched them before.

This wasn’t softness for softness’ sake. It came with the weight of something about to snap, or shatter. Mascara clung to cheeks, tears dried in place, not wiped away. Glass bags dangled—fragile, impractical, exposed—and still, the models carried them like weapons. Everything shimmered just slightly off, like the moment after something breaks and before anyone reacts. Bonnetje is turning the spotlight toward something slower, more undone. Not romantic, but raw. The kind of femininity that’s been told to quiet down and smooth itself out, but instead chooses to stay sharp. A softness that doesn’t flinch.

Taus “It’s very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.”

There’s something ghostlike about Taus’ SS26 collection—less haunted, more left behind. Presented in the quiet garden of a crumbling villa, where models lounged like relics rebirthed, each garment felt pulled from another woman’s life, one you’ll never fully know, tucked in attic trunks. A wedding dress made of vintage doilies, a flapper slip sewn from an antique scarf. These weren’t just clothes, they were whispers.

Inspired by women who refused to dim themselves—misunderstood, exiled, powerful in their difference—Taus doesn’t mourn them. It channels them. Sinéad, Little Edie, the forgotten others. Their spirit lives in every turned-inside-out waistcoat, every coffee-dyed hem, every stitch that looks more remembered than made. There’s no clean narrative here. Just the quiet hum of something once loved, lost, then pulled into new light. These are pieces meant to be worn, then passed on, marked by one life, then another. Their histories half-erased, half-invented. The mystery is the magic.

Anne Sofie Madsen “Lick the Star”

Identity doesn’t land cleanly here; it flickers, mutates, slips out of focus. For SS26, Anne Sofie Madsen offers no arrival point. Just a drift. Garments move like déjà vu, something you’ve seen before, but not like this. A suit slouched into softness. A tank top dragged into abstraction. Jeans deconstructed until all that’s left is the memory of their shape. It’s a kind of fashion séance, referencing silhouettes from the past, only to unravel them mid-sentence.

The collection takes its name from Sofia Coppola’s Lick the Star, and that adolescent tension that floats underneath everything. That strange, shapeshifting power girls learn to wield before they understand it. The silent codes, the private wars. Here, femininity isn’t worn—it’s tested and undone. A hood that disrupts a blazer’s authority. Crystals that cling like they’re hiding something. A silk strap falls in a way that doesn’t quite behave. Objects from the designers’ lives lay flat at the center of the show, but nothing about this feels still. Everything pulses with the quiet violence of becoming. And then there’s the rat: glamorous, sculptural, defiant. A clutch, yes. But also a reminder that what’s been pushed out always finds its way back in. Anne Sofie Madsen is offering an echo. Something that lingers after you’ve forgotten where it started.

Han Kjøbenhavn “Another Day”

Han Kjøbenhavn’s Another Day feels less like a show and more like a memory with frayed edges. The runway smelled of warm plastic and late-night kebab; bomber jackets puffed like suburban armor, mesh tracksuits clung with the awkward confidence of a teenager, and molded vests sat over bare chests like improvised shields. Little rituals like the fluorescent flash of salon light, or the metallic tang of gym deodorant were translated into surfaces: matte leather that absorbed light, synthetic feathers that squeaked with movement, sculpted silver that reflected nothing flattering. Masculinity here is a performance performed for no one in particular: bluster softened by restraint, bodybuilder bravado threaded with tenderness, a football jersey made ceremonious by embroidery. The casting reads like a neighborhood snapshot, not polished, only remembered, and the styling keeps tugging you between ridicule and reverence. Another Day doesn’t mythologize the suburbs; it excavates the small, repetitive dramas and dresses them in sharpness — nylon, leather, feather — until ordinary routine looks like ritual.

Cecilie Bahnsen “Hana-bi”

Ten years of Cecilie Bahnsen’s world, soft as a whispered secret, big as a summer sky, arrived on the raw concrete stage of Refshaleøen. No cathedral, no glitz. Just the gritty edges of Copenhagen, the city where this love affair between couture and easy, lived-in femininity first began.

The collection wasn’t a look back. It was a conversation; archive pieces twisted into fresh shapes, ruffles swelling and collapsing, dresses that fall like petals, but crumble like ash. The volume has grown, but the core stays the same: softness that feels urgent, fragile and unapologetic. White flooded the runway, an endless cloud of organza and lace and sequins catching the light like fireworks about to ignite. And ignite they did — bursts of silver tore through the sweetness, sequins cracked open like sparks, foiling glinted like the edge of a knife. Bahnsen’s softness is never safe. It’s a rebellion cloaked in ruffles, an explosion in pastel. Sneakers grounded the frothy dresses, a nod to the girls who live in this universe: effortless, real, unafraid to break the rules while wearing bows that could suffocate. The soundtrack, low, smoky, and distant wrapped around the crowd, pulling them into the moment. The audience? A sea of longtime cool-girls wearing the brand’s stories on their skin — a living archive seated shoulder to shoulder in the fading light. When Bahnsen took her bow, it wasn’t just applause; it was gratitude, the kind of love that only grows with time. This wasn’t a party or a show. It was a homecoming.

Nicklas Skovgaard “Bedroom Disco”

This isn’t bedtime, but the afterparty you weren’t invited to and can’t stop watching. Skovgaard’s Bedroom Disco is a cluster of sleepy chaos where duvets turn disco balls, and quilted pajamas puff like armor against the night. It’s a fever dream of satin slips, mesh layers, and oversized windbreakers that carry the weight of too many late nights and whispered secrets.

Models drift through an electric haze of padded softness and neon nostalgia, where 80s glamour crashes into the intimate mess of a pajama party gone rogue. The clothes aren’t just worn—they pulse, breathe, and shimmer with the thrill of bodies tangled between exhaustion and ecstasy. The bedroom’s messy middle ground between waking up and stepping out turned lingerie into outerwear, raw and unruly. It’s a place where cotton meets club, where bedroom innocence is flipped into a strobe-lit discovery, and where the quiet comfort of quilts becomes the sharp edge of rebellion. Skovgaard’s collection doesn’t lull you to sleep—it drags you under, spins you around, and leaves you dizzy in the sticky aftermath of a night that never quite ends.

Deadwood “Sands of Icarus”

Deadwood’s SS26 collection is a slow-burning nightmare dressed in dust and salvage, a stark exploration on what happens when we push too far—when human ambition tangles with technology while the world burns beneath our feet. The collection feels like the aftermath of a silent explosion, where clothes are fragments of a future ravaged by loss. Models drift through shadows wrapped in cracked leather, shredded canvas, and slick experimental fabrics, as if scavenging remnants of a civilization that soared too close to the sun and lost its grip.

Colors run hot and cold—scorched earth tones clash with the eerie glint of metal, like relics half-buried in dust, reminders of both destruction and resilience. This isn’t just fashion; it’s a fractured story of collapse and choice. Each piece whispers the question hanging heavy in the air: when the storm hits and control slips away, do we resist the chaos, become it, or surrender and move with its merciless rhythm? There’s something raw and intimate in this reckoning; bodies caught between the pull of ruin and the stubborn pulse of survival. Deadwood’s Sands of Icarus doesn’t just imagine a world unraveling. It dares you to decide what you’ll be when everything you know burns away.

ROTATE “Spiral Rose”

In a space veiled by sheer curtains so light they almost dissolve into thin air, Rotate’s SS26 collection unfolded between shadow and sun. The translucent drapes filtered daylight, wrapping everything in a fragile 70s haze. A scene that unfolded like wandering inside a woman’s curated dream: soft, personal, and alive. Against this diaphanous backdrop, the clothes breathed — dresses that fluttered like petals caught on a slow breeze, scalloped hems and delicate buttons tracing curves like faint memories. But this was no fragile fantasy; each piece was a deliberate act of softness with teeth, a flirtation between innocence and edge. Playful 3D daisies dotted fabrics with a sly wink, hinting at whimsy but grounded in a cool, lived-in confidence that felt urgent and now. Denim flared and twisted — worn like armor for the modern woman who wants to hold tenderness without sacrificing her power. The collection wasn’t about contradictions, but simply what a woman wants to wear. Something effortless, feminine, and airy. Rotate’s SS26 breathed an intimate, cinematic softness, a quiet celebration of lightness and grace in a world that often forgets how to be gentle.