A Return To Traditional Art Forms: The Sculptural Trend Is A Highlight At Copenhagen Fashion Week

Copenhagen Fashion Week kicked off this week, with people flocking from around the world to see the upcoming Spring/Summer '24 collections. From the runways to the street style, we spotted a clear fascination with the principles of sculpture, where orientation, proportion, scale, articulation, and balance were all deeply considered. Playful interpretations of line, shape, texture, form, space, colour and materiality were presented both on and off the runway, and there was an evident sense of humour in the styling choices of designers and the front row alike.

Aluminium pore strips were moulded over the noses of models at Henrik Vibskov, and a 20-foot tall statue of a charging centurion glared over the audience at the 'The Garment' show. OpéraSport and Rolf Ekroth constructed flourishes of 3D florals; while Latimmier decorated its models in corporate attire and found objects like stationery; and Nicklas Skovgaard postulated mannequins dressed in his designs while a singular living model suggestively danced their way through the show, trying on multiple looks from the collection.

We're living in a moment in time that has been marked by millennial grey, a world where colour is disappearing from the cultural zeitgeist, but as Copenhagen's fashion week demonstrates, humans have a base desire to explore the many facets of artistic expression – be that with colour or other mediums. The keen physicality of such a medium also strikes a stark contrast against the myriad 'meta' trends that have been swelling in popularity over the last few years.

Gone are the influences of technological advancement that we've come to expect from fashion brands experimenting with generative AI or utilising robotics on the runway at Paris fashion week (see: Coperni).

Ahead, we explore the sculptural street-style looks that echoed the realised imaginings of the Danish runways using age-old techniques such as texture, draping, the accentuation of negative space, malleable forms and exaggerated silhouettes.