Copenhagen Fashion: The Week That Roared

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Fashion may not be Denmark’s biggest export — instead, it’s pharmaceuticals, food and furniture — but that doesn’t matter to the brands and designers here, who are fast gaining traction in a saturated international market, promoting themselves as the stylish, sustainable and collaborative upstarts.

That famous Scandi aesthetic — a happy young woman in a breezy vintage dress sailing over cobbled streets on a bicycle — has now become so familiar, and aspirational, it’s almost a cliché, like the effortlessly chic Parisienne; the black-clad, sharp-edged New Yorker, or the slim Italian in soft-shouldered tailoring.

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The Scandi look continues to bubble up from the streets of the serene Danish capital, where women of all ages love vintage, mixing high and low and adapting their clothes around their day-to-day lives.

Last season, designer Cecilie Bahnsen showed off dresses with uneven hemlines inspired by the way some of her fellow Danes tuck and fasten their dresses so that they don’t get in the way of pedaling their bikes.

Bahnsen is famous for her chic, baby doll dresses with puffed sleeves, and, during a collection preview at her sunny studio in the northeastern end of Copenhagen, described the Danish approach as “very playful, an effortless way of putting looks together.”

This season, Ditte Reffstrup, creative director of Ganni, said her spring 2023 collection was about conjuring that heart-pumping energy of cycling to work, “rolling through the city, and feeling the joy of a Copenhagen summer.”

Barbara Potts and Cathrine Saks, the designers of Saks Potts, said there’s only one question they ask each other in the studio: “Would we actually wear it?”

In the spirit of the week, and of the Danish love of vintage, the duo based their entire spring 2023 collection on Mary, Crown

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