I love Copenhagen. The first time I went was seven years ago, when my son was barely six months old. It was August, we were touring the city on a cargo bike and Fashion Week was in full swing. I remember being struck by the naturalness with which Danish women mixed textures, proportions, and personality when dressing. It didn't seem like they were trying to be stylish. They simply were.
Copenhagen is a city where good taste is part of everything: of the architecture, of the food, of the culture. A city obsessed with design and with the idea that beauty and functionality can, and should, go hand in hand.
And yet, the more time I spend there, the more interesting I find the contradiction.
Friends who live in Denmark talk about the same tension: behind the great design and that culture of well-being, there is still a strong attachment to the established. Copenhagen may be known for its progressive values and creative culture, but it remains, in many ways, a rather homogeneous society.
One of my friends, a LEGO Group executive, once explained it to me this way: "Danes like you to be creative, but not so much that you step out of line." Fashion is one of the places where a culture can challenge the established.
Style is a form of rebellion against the conventional.
For fashion girls, regardless of where they are from or what they do, style is a form of rebellion against the conventional. A way to assert individuality while still being part of the culture that surrounds them. And this year, that personal expression felt especially joyful.
What struck me most about the Copenhagen street style images was the variety of women who appeared. There was no sense that fashion required women to make themselves small to be part of it. Different bodies, different ages, different ways of dressing, and different reasons for getting dressed up.
Color was everywhere. Explosions of Marimekko and that very Marni eccentricity. Lace over stripes, flowers under tailored blazers. Volume. Clothes that take up space.
The shows contrasted radically with last season's Paris runways.
In a culture where conformity can be discreetly valued, fashion becomes an especially visible form of rebellion. Not a rebellion in the punk sense, but in that very Danish gesture of allowing oneself, simply, to be a little different.
Fashion becomes an especially visible form of rebellion.
CPHFW breaks with the established in the best way. Because we are living a moment of extreme uniformity. Ozempic bodies telling us how
we should be. AI filling our feeds with a vanilla version of beauty, largely programmed by men far removed from the women who actually wear those clothes.
I am not particularly daring when it comes to dressing, which is why CPHFW fascinates me so much. Barcelona is a fantastic place to live, but it can be too safe when it comes to dressing. I remember that, when I was a teenager, my tieta explained the rules to me: in October, tights and a jacket were mandatory, and sandals, simply, were not worn, even if it was still 25 degrees.
Then I lived in the Lower East Side of New York in my twenties. There, a woman could go out for a bagel in a leopard coat and jewelry, and no one batted an eye.
For years I have preferred to dress safely. Perhaps because I was disconcerted by that coexistence between eccentricity and European tradition. I had assumed that dressing well consisted of cinching the waist, flattering the silhouette, and making sure everything was in its place. Copenhagen made me wonder if being flattering is even important.
Copenhagen made me wonder if being flattering is even important.
Of all the fashion weeks, Copenhagen seemed the most imaginative to me. A way of dressing in which desire is ahead of rules. Where more is more because more is fun. Childlike, not infantilized.
My daughter, for example, puts on a tutu with lace tights, a floral jacket, ties a bow in her hair, puts on her ballet flats and walks out the door without thinking twice. She would fit into Copenhagen Fashion Week much more naturally than I would.
And perhaps that is precisely what I liked the most: discovering that the famous Scandinavian minimalism has, at least in Copenhagen, much less of minimalism than I imagined. This season I have seen personality, maximalism and, above all, a desire to play.
Perhaps therein lies Copenhagen's true secret: a culture that has made restraint a form of identity has also found a way to break its own rules with a very chic naturalness.
And as I watched it, I couldn't help but think of Barcelona. We have creativity, talent and our own aesthetic identity. Perhaps we just need to dare a little more to show it.