At the Cecilie Bahnsen studio in Copenhagen, Bahnsen herself is pointing to an image of look 26 on her moodboard, the day before her 10 year anniversary show. She gasps a little when she sees it, grabbing at the part of her t-shirt that covers her heart before excitedly saying, “This one! It’s inspired by Copenhagen…and the way girls ride their bikes, tucking in dresses so that they don’t get caught in the wheels.”
The look itself is a white dress that appears whipped up from a dollop of uneven butter, with material gathered at one hip, as Bahnsen has pointed out, to create the illusion of a tuck. It’s layered with a tactical-esque vest like those worn for running, except this one is made up of a fabric composed entirely of flowers. The model does, of course, look like she could easily break out into a sprint if she wanted to because she’s wearing a pair of Asics sneakers that have been dipped in silver, with knee-high stocking socks. If Bahnsen hadn’t mentioned it, my eyes would have gravitated towards it anyway because it is something I would very much like to live in.
But it’s also just a fitting look for Bahnsen to highlight because this year marks her return to Copenhagen, where she is from and based, after showing for five seasons in Paris. Nearly every fashion editor I spoke to at Copenhagen fashion week mentioned her anniversary show as the thing they were most looking forward to. Half of them were wearing a voluminous Cecilie Bahnsen top with large puffed sleeves or peplum as they said it. In the moment they weren’t just editors working but fangirls fangirling.
Bahnsen’s work feels particularly made for us. Her dresses and tops are often so comically large they feel like perfect editorial foder, but work for real life because of how easily they are layered over t-shirts and jeans. Cecilie Bahnsen is extra but comfortable. It’s also not uncommon to overhear someone talk about how they want to get married in the brand. “We're lucky that many choose us for their wedding but it's also lovely when I see a woman who's just thrown it on on a Monday or made it her own! I think it's that electricity that the brand is able to do both.” To wear Bahnsen is to be somewhat of a groupie. It is a uniform for a very special club.
Bahnsen knows this and it’s actually one of the things she loves most about her universe of fairytale dresses that may look like dessert but are often worn with the sensibilities of a rebellious teen tomboy. “The guests are part of the show as well,” she tells me. “They’re wearing their favorite pieces and the memory that comes with it.”
Actually, much of the signature Cecilie Bahnsen look is inspired not by some film or obscure fantastical reference but the very real way in which Bahnsen observed people wearing her clothing. It’s partially why she felt called to return to Copenhagen, “It’s great to do a collection here again because we pull so much of the inspiration from here, from how the team worked, how women around me dress. When we added denim to the brand, it was because the girls wore the jeans under the dresses here! Same with the outer wear.”
She saw the quirky practical styling as a way of safeguarding. “It was about…’How can you protect the dress?’” A Cecilie Bahnsen piece is precious…but not precious enough to sit in your closet while you’re out living.
“It was really adding these things around the dresses that makes us what we are,” she continues. “We started to build the universe and strengthen the brand in that way, but also just because it makes sense how we wear it.”
The 10 year anniversary collection that she showed last week was a culmination of everything she’s done up until this point. It was an ode to the ways in which everyone has worn Cecilie Bahnsen over the last decade. “I really wanted it to be something different and use this show in Copenhagen as an opportunity to do something a little bit out of the box...something more reflective,” she says. “We were working with our archives and turning things on their head and putting them together in a new way.”
And so Bahnsen went straight to the archives, which is housed in her studio. She reminisced about all of the pieces she’s made so far, while also noting, through fits of laughter, how much more voluminous everything has gotten. “We decided it would be a white collection going into silver,” she continues. “It’s a creative collage of the last ten years. I wanted to show as many of the fabrics we have developed and techniques we have developed, and put the silhouettes together in new ways. That's really been the starting point for the collection.”
The result was dresses and tops and skirts and shorts that felt more like a collage than a singular page of the Cecilie Bahnsen playbook. Some of the dresses were quite literally a collage, with a a handful of them featuring one dress hitched to the back, appearing at first like a cape or train. “There you have two looks in one!” Bahnsen says.
And yet the anniversary show wasn’t just an ode or a reflection but an attachment exercise. “Some of these pieces are so precious to me, but they should get out and live a bit. It was all about working with what we have and putting it together, giving it a new life, but also enjoying what they already are. It's a dialogue between the different collections.”
Looking out into the audience, you could see everyone was grateful that Bahnsen was an expert at letting go. Nearly everyone was wearing some piece of Cecilie Bahnsen, even in the form of her popular Asics collab sneaker, while pointing out the looks they wanted to own next.
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