Cecilie Bahnsen is a patissier of fashion, one whose dresses are as light as meringue and “iced” with floral embellishments. At times their sweetness approaches the saccharine, but season after season the designer has been adding to her “menu,” and this pre-fall collection was a good summary of the new entrées.
Sporty elements came via Bahnsen’s past collaborations with Asics and, last season, with North Face. (This collection introduced a new pair-up, with the Japanese bag brand Porter.) Bahnsen carried some of these techy touches forward, as she said, into her world. Backpack-like straps read like harder-edged harnesses on dresses with voluminous upside-down baking cup-like silhouettes. Bahnsen also made good use of nylon (which is like the taffeta of technical fabrics) to different effects: A semi-sheer nylon used for lingerie-like separates had an almost waxy look, while a crisper fabric was used for a curved-back hooded coat that would be perfect for cycling around Copenhagen. These materials looked right at home among the jacquards, fil coupés and organzas that are Bahnsen’s signatures. The designer introduced denim in 2023, and there was a raw denim set (trim, cropped jacket, mini rah-rah skirt) in the offering. Bahnsen described the palette—leaf brown, army green, and black, added to pink and cream—as Nordic, and she highlighted the everyday functionality of many of the pieces, which is also common in fashions of the region.
The music Bahnsen listens to when designing seems to affect her collections. When Okay Kaya’s indie/folk songs were on rotation in the studio, the result was one of the brand’s most romantic collections for spring 2022. The soundtrack to the making of this season’s line was Merry Lamb Lamb, whose electronic beats have a sweet but slightly industrial metallic feel to them. (The artist appears in the lookbook along with model Martina de Pretto.) Similar dichotomies appeared in this offering, which Bahnsen described as having “innocence but also strength” and which was a mix of the “technical and feminine.”
