A Cecilie Bahnsen gown is unimaginable to overlook. Romantic, voluminous, and each bit as dreamy as a fairy story, the Danish designer’s distinctive creations are artworks that may be worn for every event.
And at Paris Trend Week, inside an ethereal whitewashed gallery nestled within the metropolis’s bustling Marais district, ladies sporting a panoply of breezy, maximalist attire in blacks, whites, and powder blues—coolly layered over denims and Uniqlo base layers—are busy taking themselves orders from patrons. Days earlier, they’d been prepping appears to be like, making remaining changes, orchestrating the line-up, and capturing content material whereas a tiny youngster (belonging to stylist Emelie Johansson) performed with an iPad on the ground, fortunately noshing on half a cucumber the dimensions of her forearm.
It is the day after Bahnsen’s fall/winter 2023 present, and her assortment—recent off the Palais de Tokyo runway, operating the gamut from lemon pastel and sunflower yellow by cerulean blue to rose blossom and magenta pink—is now displayed on mannequins. Within the lead-up to the present and gross sales interval, the Copenhagen-based artistic, greatest recognized for the aforementioned frocks, transports her complete group to the French capital—lock, inventory, and a few gently whirring stitching machines. “My group is like an prolonged household—we eat lunch collectively on a regular basis—so this seems like a household journey,” Bahnsen tells ELLE.com.
Cecilie Bahnsen walks the runway at her fall/winter 2023 present.
Getty Photographs
Having begun her profession as an assistant below John Galliano in Paris, Bahnsen acquired her grasp’s diploma in womenswear at London’s Royal Collage of Artwork and spent three years working at British label Erdem earlier than launching her namesake model in 2015 in her native Denmark. The road acquired immediate acclaim, and he or she’s since segued from main the Copenhagen Trend Week schedule to exhibiting within the massive leagues at PFW, the place she’s now in her third season.
Bahnsen dubs her oeuvre “on a regular basis couture”—one that mixes the romance and craftsmanship of Parisian ateliers with London’s artistic power and Denmark’s heritage in design and structure. Nevertheless, whereas one would possibly draw comparisons with London designer Simone Rocha for these pumped-up volumes, it is Bahnsen’s clear, up to date Scandinavian aesthetic and infinite lightness of contact that units her aside.
The label—impartial thanks partially to help from the Danish Arts Council—is on monitor to hit $10 million in gross sales this yr, with international stockists like MatchesFashion, and moved into a brand new headquarters in Copenhagen’s design district in Might (“when the climate is obvious, you possibly can see all the way in which to the ocean,” Bahnsen says). Just lately, it launched a New York workplace, relocating two members of the group, together with its worldwide head of gross sales.
A glance from Cecilie Bahnsen fall/winter 2023.
Photograph: Filippo Fior / Gorunway.com
The most recent assortment locations an elevated emphasis on wearability—whereas retaining Bahnsen’s whimsical DNA comprised of colour and thrives—with a extra grown-up, elevated air.
“This season, the silhouettes had been so much slimmer, so it had a extra refined femininity to it, in addition to being extra mature, with a bit extra angle than earlier than,” Bahnsen says of layered pencil skirts embracing a number of physique shapes—her signature organza ruched and smocked for stretch and luxury.
Likewise, the providing has turn into extra rounded and intensive, with elevated utilitarian items in Japanese uncooked denim—jackets given a kick because of pannier pockets, and top-stitch tailor-made pants with pin-tuck pleats on the entrance—plus, delicate knitwear in recycled cashmere and merino wool. The objective, Bahnsen says, is “to maintain pushing what we do and evolving our universe.”
How her personal group kinds her items is a continued supply of inspiration—Bahnsen determined to launch denim when she noticed ladies in her workplace sporting their attire over denims, whereas the concept for final season’s uneven designs got here from one who would use a ribbon to tie her skirt to at least one aspect when she was biking to work.
Asics x Cecilie Bahnsen.
Getty Photographs
After launching baggage for spring, fall 2023 boasts a full sneaker assortment with Japanese sportswear outfit Asics—final season, she embellished upcycled inventory with floral appliqués, creating 50 one-of-a-kind items that bought out inside two minutes of dropping on her web site. “The sneakers are such a technical product, however Asics actually embraced the femininity of our model with the florals and the transparency,” Bahnsen says.
Sustainability is integral to Bahnsen’s model, which is working more and more with leftover supplies from earlier seasons—manipulated and patchworked collectively. “It is about taking one thing two-dimensional and making it 3D by including the amount,” she enthuses. “It lets us add our personal contact to one thing that already exists.”
In reality, a choice of fall’s organzas and taffetas hails from Nona Supply (the LVMH-backed initiative that centralizes extra inventory from the group’s homes, making it obtainable to be used by youthful labels), with which Bahnsen has lately began working. Subsequent, she’ll be scoping out materials from Dior and a number of the group’s different companions, and plans so as to add resale into the combination later this yr, looking for to “create items to be cherished and cherished and handed on like furnishings and design.”
Suki performs at Cecilie Bahnsen’s fall/winter 2023 present.
Photograph: Filippo Fior / Gorunway.com
The Palais de Tokyo present featured a dwell efficiency by French musician Suki, recognized for her confessional “bed room dream pop,” and a simple-yet-effective LED lighting idea which modified colour in accordance with the outfits that appeared on the runway. The concept, derived from the German notion of gesamtkunstwerk, that means “complete murals,” mirrors the ethos of the Cecilie Bahnsen model—a dwelling, respiration, biking organism, grounded firmly in on a regular basis life.
