Cecilie Bahnsen FALL WINTER 2022 “night wandering”

“My inspiration this season is Tove Ditlevsen, a well-known writer in Denmark. I fell in love with her poetry as a teenager, it’s so beautiful and brave. Tove wrote a lot about girlhood and becoming a woman, about living life on your own terms and finding your voice. In the 1930s, she was a young working-class woman who followed her dreams fearlessly. We open the show with my favourite of her poems “Night Wandering.” It is extremely beautiful; reading it in Danish gives me goosebumps.”

– cecilie bahnsen, founder and creative director.

Cecilie Bahnsen often finds inspiration and celebrates the work of diverse women across creative industries. For Fall Winter 2022, the collection takes inspiration from writer Tove Ditlevsen, the Danish poet who has been discovered in recent years outside of Denmark, most notably by the New York Times. Cecilie remembers finding herself in the poetry: as a young designer dreaming of showing a collection in Paris, she found motivation in Tove’s courage to follow her path as an artist.

For as long as she can remember, Cecilie has been enamoured by Parisian couture, and this collection is an ode to fabrics made by hand, devoted to the romance of craftsmanship complemented by Scandinavian design codes. Committed to the mastery of the old ways and upholding couture traditions in a contemporary context.

This season, the label’s fabrics take flowers to extremes — running the gamut from delicate petals to large scale blooms, from perfect reproductions to distorted, abstracted flowers. Looking to the 18th century English artist Mary Delany, who began creating botanical collages at the age of 72, Cecilie felt a kinship with Mary’s perfectionist instincts: the repetitiveness, her obsession with details, the sense of creativity as meditation in her work. Ultimately the beauty in Delany’s work is found in the realisation that there is no distinct timeline in discovering one’s creative voice, in staying true to your work and doing what you love.

The mood in the collection plays with notions of hyper-femininity: innocent and daring. Drawing a parallel with Tove’s exploration of girlhood in works such as ‘Youth’ and ‘Childhood’, skirts and dresses are pulled up to shorter hemlines while still maximising volume. The silhouettes become more decadent than usual, with couture-grade voluminousness, flat surfaces suddenly blossoming. Silhouettes are surreal, dreamy and perfectly unfocused. Cecilie continues to explore asymmetry, with dresses hoisted up, finished with drawstring, bringing forms to different dimensions. The collection features a series of classical suiting, juxtaposing super-short pinafore dresses and transparent layers.

Looks are developed through mixing motifs, with unexpected and off-kilter abundances of texture and colour. The colour palette remains predominantly black and white, with flourishes of colour: a shock of red, blush pink and flashes of electric blue and green, exhibiting a glowing and hazy essence. Corals woven with a white backing perfectly dilute the colour and bring a painterly dreamlike quality. Metres of light pink, sorbet and red fabric have been draped on the form to create cocoon-like minidresses with decadent ruching and gathering details that dramatically create the silhouette.

Exploring notions of comfort, ease and craftsmanship, knits further develop new textures and tones. Silhouettes for layering and underpinning, building up a story in dressing.

Outerwear sees utilitarian details meet a feminine approach. Taking on a raincoat functionality, suitable for all elements. Large embroidered flowers adorn the pieces, enveloping the wearer in layered motifs, playing with every component, allowing for exploration.

Further expanding her universe, Cecilie develops her range of bags, as much as it is a piece on its own or an embellishment to the Cecilie Bahnsen look, the materials carry the same craftsmanship handwork and features, adorned with drawstrings and ruching, as throughout the rest of the collection.

Shoes continue to take inspiration directly from the collection, made from functional neoprene. Each shoe, handmade and finished with couture like details incorporating beading and translating the effortless and poetic feel found in the dresses of the brand.