Cecile Bahnson Fall/Winter 2023

This season, we’re breaking down the Fall/Winter 2023 collections with a new franchise The Fashion Week cheat sheet. After talking to designers about their inspirations, their hero pieces, the faces on the catwalk and the names on the front row, we bring you everything you need to know about AW23.

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This season saw Cecily Bahnson explore color in a way she had never seen before. “Usually we focus on monochrome, everything in one color. I wanted to open it up a bit, to stitch the pink colors, to make the colors together,” the designer explained about her new collection, which she named “Untitled (pink, white, red, red). .

Having joined the Paris schedule a few seasons ago, Bahnsen is still bringing that Copenhagen vibe to the French capital with her intimate shows and ethereal sets. She says that working between these two spaces is key to her work, and this is definitely something that comes through in the clothes.

“Being from Copenhagen, we do things at our own pace, which I really enjoy,” Bahnsen told me after the event. “I love being able to do that, and take the collection to Paris for Fashion Week, and be a part of the electricity and romance. Creatively, I always need to be a little bit away from stress, so I’m really excited to be able to do both, get in and out of the busy fashion bits.”

Theme and inspiration.

“We always start with the fabrics, and creating textures, looks, themes – and this season, we started working with the colors and textures that were in the studio and bringing these together,” she says. “We wanted to move away from monochrome in the collection and embrace more colors.”

“So, you have these glue jobs where we go from soft pink to bright pink to magenta. It’s really about these kinds of shapes – and then they’re smashed together and you get these crazy textures. When I took those soft fabrics and put them on the mannequin, I could really see the collection start to blossom. Well, this is where we started.

Bahnsen brought a variety of colors to her trademark. One was a mixture of sky and sesame blue; Another is mixing sunflower with lemon patel in yellows; A third is pink in color from sorbet and to poppy red, flower to magenta. The fabric is folded and gathered from a certain angle to look like beautiful flowers, and she explored more straight shapes than usual.

“The collections are always a continuation of what came before,” she added. “I think of it as a diary, where we keep going – we add new colors and textures. I’m always inspired by the girls in the studio and how they wear the collections, which helps inform what comes next.”

Hero products

“This season, we started working with slim silhouettes and really building up the layers, so having pencil skirts and these more linear silhouettes is very new for us. It feels more mature and feminine.

“We also have knitwear, outerwear and then denim – I think this really takes the brand from being about clothing to a whole look. I hope this opens up a way for more women and different types of people to wear our pieces – how to be part of your own beauty in your own way, in your own style.”

The show

BANSON performed her set in an extremely intimate setting, back at the Palais de Tokyo, with singer-songwriter Suki performing live. “I wanted to create something really intimate and personal. When you think about a fashion show, you only have about seven minutes, but you have to put a lot of your personality and everything on the line, and I wanted to try the electricity or the nerve that I feel as a designer. The audience.”

On choosing Suki to perform, Bahnson said: “I love the way she creates her music – it’s like poetry. It’s actually a creative diary of how she feels, and she puts all that emotion into writing. That’s what I’m trying to do with my collections – putting whatever inspires you in front of you in that moment and then just being creative and imaginative. “It’s about not letting it control the process, but just seeing what happens and playing the game,” he said.

to be taken

“For me, it’s all about comfort and wearability – a woman who wears Cecile Bahnsen can make it her own, it’s not a dress that fits her, and it should be part of her ongoing style. You can buy a dress one time and wear it then, and now in a different way, maybe from a new collection. In combination with advanced – all this is part of one universe, a continuous wardrobe.

“Ultimately, I want my customers to feel as beautiful and feminine and comfortable as they do whatever they love in what I’ve created.”