Best of Copenhagen Fashion Week, Where Designers Look Toward Authenticity

Known for its street style and softer approach to Scandinavian minimalism, Copenhagen Fashion Week arrives just past the midpoint of summer, yet already brimming with ideas about how Spring/Summer 2027 should feel. This season, designers are looking inward, turning to childhood memories, artistic fantasy, personal identity, and the realities of their own practices in search of something more authentic. Paolina Russo returns to the girl spending summer at her grandmother’s house before escaping to the skatepark at twilight; Munthe imagines a wardrobe for the artist at work; SSON confronts fashion’s relationship with pollution beneath the fantasy of resort life; and Skall Studio carries a sense of childhood familiarity into an adult wardrobe. Meanwhile, graduates of the Royal Danish Academy explore identity, belonging, uncertainty, and hope as they begin defining their own creative voices. Across each, authenticity emerges not as an aesthetic, but as a way of looking inward to determine what feels worth carrying forward.

Royal Danish Academy: Cut from Many Cloths

The Royal Danish Academy celebrated fourteen graduates from its MA program in Fashion, Clothing, and Textiles during Copenhagen Fashion Week, presenting thesis collections united under the theme “New Landscapes for Change.” As fourteen distinct perspectives moved down the runway, ideas of “identity, belonging, uncertainty, and hope” emerged across the collections. 

Grounded in a curriculum of tailoring and textiles, the designers embraced bold prints, textile manipulation, knitwear, weaving, and hand-dyed techniques, alongside tulle, mixed fabrics, fringe, upcycled materials, fluid draping, and form-fitting silhouettes. Having spent the past two years studying in Copenhagen, the graduates brought perspectives from across the world to the Danish capital, resulting in collections that felt deeply individual yet connected by a shared sense of possibility. Most striking was the abundance of color and an overwhelming feeling of joy and optimism. For this new generation, design becomes a way of exploring identity and belonging while navigating the digital age and the search for relevance in a rapidly changing world.

SSON: Climate Anxiety 

A white-sand beach and the atmosphere of pure vacation leisure introduced visitors to SSON‘s Spring/Summer 2027 The Resort presentation. Except the tropical Xanadu was not quite what it seemed, with disaster looming beneath the sand. Continuing the brand’s exploration of shifting values around the way we dress, the collection asks, “how we reconcile beauty, desire and consumption in an era defined by crisis?”

The collection oscillates between glamour and discomfort, revealing how society continues to indulge in pleasure while suspending the realities looming around it. Looking critically at fashion as a polluting industry, SSON examines 20th-century ideas of leisure and travel through the visual language of vintage advertisements and resort campaigns, symbols of aspirational luxury now viewed through a generation’s environmental anxiety. Silhouettes become exaggerated and playful, revisiting historic styles through boleros, capes, bloomers, and feminine dresses. Upcycling remains central as each look is constructed from deconstructed secondhand garments and rebuilt rather than simply repurposed. A classic resort palette of brown, beige, khaki, navy, turquoise, and yellow maintains an alluring sense of optimism, even as unease lingers just beneath the surface.

Skall Studio: La Piscine

Michelin-starred restaurant Aure became the setting for Skall Studio’s Spring/Summer 2027 show, “La Piscine,” where trees, water, and a 18th-century gunpowder house framed a garden runway overlooking the water and forest beyond. For sisters Julie and Marie Skall, the collection focused on timeless treasures and a free-spirited sensibility, creating a dialogue between the everyday and the artful. Singer-songwriter Ida Vermehren performed music inspired by her forthcoming folk-influenced EP, while the models, many local Copenhageners, family, and friends of the house, brought a relaxed familiarity to the presentation. Vegan shoes by KEEN, Birkenstock, and Ball Pagés were paired with vintage baskets from basket maker Steen Hedegaard Madsen’s private archive and straw hats from the Skall sisters’ own collection. One model even walked alongside a bicycle.

The clothes carried that same sense of ease. Oversized bows, ruffles, tassels, foulards, lace, and metal belt accessories punctuated predominantly airy, fluid silhouettes, contrasted by more structured denim, outerwear, and shorts. Pattern emerged largely through the materials themselves, from lace and cutouts to ruffles and stripes, alongside a singular yellow and turquoise brocade weave. Ultimately, the familiarity of the models, setting, and clothes felt utterly Copenhagen; lived-in rather than constructed, with each element naturally belonging to the next.

Paolina Russo: Lone Star

At the center of Paolina Russo’s Spring/Summer 2027 collection is a summer spent at her grandmother’s house, where dreamlike, idyllic days unfold beside a sewing box while quilting a Lone Star quilt. At twilight, she follows the star to the skatepark, where late-night adventure, adrenaline, and new friendships take over. That collision of worlds shapes the collection, layering sporty pieces with romantic treasures that might have been discovered around the house. Feminine textiles meet hardworking canvas and skate-ready denim, while knitwear transforms patterns into kaleidoscopes of acid color across loose-fitting tops. Denim takes on a new sunset treatment, alongside relaxed cargo pants, T-shirts, napkin shirts, and even a corset reimagined for everyday wear. Florals and saturated color preserve a sense of girlhood whimsy before adulthood begins to dull its edges.

More than a wardrobe, the collection proposes a uniform for belonging, one that adapts to identity rather than altering it and moves comfortably from day to night. That spirit extended to the presentation itself. Open to the public, the show brought together models, friends, and skateboarders, while live performances from friends of the house unfolded in a battle of the bands on either side of the runway. The result was less a traditional fashion show than a celebration of community, freedom, and main-character girlhood energy.

Munthe Designs for the Atelier

Inspired by the atelier, Naja Munthe imagines the working world of an artist surrounded by apprentices, sketches, notes, and projects in progress. That process appears directly on the runway through relaxed denim overalls, paint splatters, stains, and other traces of making, each suggesting a larger work unfolding behind the scenes. The atelier becomes a space defined equally by artistry, dedication, and craft.

That duality extends to the balance of masculine and feminine dressing. Sharp tailoring meets softer, exaggerated silhouettes; ruffled dresses are paired with workwear trousers; oversized denim and overalls sit alongside pearl-embellished knits, crochet lace tops, structured jackets, and ties. A palette of blue, lemon, cream, green, and brown is punctuated by painterly bursts of color through accessories. Spring/Summer 2027 also introduces a collaboration with Judith Sinnamon, whose paintings capture shifting light and the flora of the Australian landscape through fluid oil paint. Bare legs, relaxed knits, and flowing silhouettes allow for freedom of movement, creating a wardrobe for every stage of life in the atelier, from working and making to welcoming guests and presenting finished artwork.

“The atelier is more than a workspace; it is her universe,”

-Naja Munthe.