In the local Scandinavian fashion week rat race, we in Stockholm get beaten with a broom by Copenhagen

Claes Britton | Feb 11, 2008 | 0 comments

I’ve been on my way for several seasons, but at the end of last week I was finally got down to spend some 36 intense hours in the thick of Copenhagen’s Fashion Week, during which I was able to squeeze in three fashion shows, a magazine release, a shop opening and two cocktail parties, as well as proper visits to two of the three fair venues. It’s been several years since my most recent visit in the Danish Capital, where I was a frequent guest in the late 90s and early 00s, when we worked with our magazine Stockholm New, and also later, in the mid 00s, when several projects for Saga Furs connected with their 50-year anniversary frequently brought us down here.

If much has happened with Stockholm’s Fashion Week, Copenhagen’s has exploded. When I last visited the week, around the Millenium, it was all in its infancy, quite small and amateurish, a concern for a slim few. Copenhagen’s first PR agency Inq was newly founded, and so was their first photographers’ and stylists’ agency Style Counsel, which were both very friendly and helpful and took care of us at the time. Today, both of these are heavily established players, the latter now transformed into a fashion agency. The many shows around town — in spectacular venues such as City Hall and Danish Radio’s beautiful concert hall (now operated by The Gallery Fair) — are large-scale, very professional productions, on a whole different level than ours in every detail, that must be said, with the models also of a much higher standard. Stockholm has made serios efforts to compete with Copenhagen, partly by altering dates for our Fashion Week. This ambition is certainly admirable, but the question that imposed itself, to me and several others of the many visiting Swedes with whom I discussed the matter, was whether it wouldn’t, after all, be more practical if we were to collaborate in a mutual Scandinavian fashion week in Copenhagen, if maximum international impact is the aim, which I guess it must be. Copenhagen also has a strong asset in the centrally located and most pleasant fair hall The Gallery, where all Scandinavian brands of interest, Danish and Swedish, were represented at the convenience of buyers from around the world. In addition, there is the younger, streetier Øksnehallen and the large-scale, mainstream Bella Center, while we in Stockholm have nothing at all besides the shows.

I also found the fashion itself quite inspiring. Even if the Danes still have a general lenience toward the tacky, with a weekness for glitter and applications, their looks are also generally more exclusive, feminine, delicate, colorful, extravagant and sexy han ours. Brands such as Noir, Baum und Pferdgarten, Rützou, and others, simply have no Swedish peers. After Stockholm’s fashion week, where you can easily get a feeling that it all has become a concern exclusively for 22-year old bloggers, it felt good, that I must admit, to stroll through the fair booths and browse my way through racks of well-produced garments with high finish in materials such as silk, fine leather, fur and cashmere — however smart and trendy our own many succesful denim brands may be.

In the local Scandinavian fashion week rat race, we in Stockholm get beaten with a broom by Copenhagen

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