This season Cecilie Bahnsen didn’t just show clothes, she offered up her heart.
The collection, titled “Heartfelt,” was less a runway show and more a meditation on color, shape and emotion. Love literally pulsed a pale pink beneath the clothing via embedded LED hearts synchronized to the music.
It was also Bahnsen at her most experimental. Patchworked dresses sculpted from The North Face’s technical gear, silk hoodies reimagined into trapeze silhouettes and sculptural anoraks traced with lace all carried her signature romanticism. Her traditional shapes were more voluminous and swelled around the body, but retained a lightness and floated beautifully.
Bahnsen toed a fine line between delicacy and utility but with the addition of functional fabrics and accessories — such as thick nylon straps and belts, plastic snap buckles and carabiner effects, a trapeze dress with a ripstop, or a pencil skirt paired with a deconstructed mountain jacket — she deftly navigated away from saccharine.
The designer and her studio have been working diligently on deconstructing drape and structure by taking vintage pieces apart and reworking their bones. As a result, the skirts and dresses also had the most coveted accessory — pockets — cleverly hidden amongst the poufs and folds of the garments.
The run of looks was a meditation on color, too, with tonal pacing in white, pink, black and red, while plastic floral appliqués added ebullient bubbles of texture.
It should be noted that Bahnsen sent out models in a variety of shapes and sizes, in a season in which body positivity has been perhaps forgotten so far.
Beyond the runway, Bahnsen guest edited the latest edition of A Magazine, which served as a physical mood board of sorts. It’s filled with drawings by her son and sketches from her husband, interviews with personal friends and photos that peek into their lives. Through the curation for the 200-page tome, it became the collective inspiration for the collection.
“Love” was a nod to not only romance, but resilience. “Choosing love in a time that’s quite difficult, looking at technology with a new eyes and being creative with it, and finding your way with it,” she said backstage. “Both like embracing craft and the making of [clothes], but also remembering to have fun and big love.”
Bahnsen continued her collaboration with Asics on a slip on trainer that added another element of ease for the modern romantic.