The concept of Nordic chic has expanded beyond tonal minimalism to include color and print of late. It’s not like those elements were new to the region’s style, but they’ve come into focus with the success of brands like Ganni and Rave Review. Copenhagen street style has also contributed to the trend, as have a new generation of designers who, having grown up with clean-lined clothes, want to make their own way and do something different.
“I think the fashion industry here went kind of mad,” said Charlotte Eskildsen, the seasoned designer behind Designers Remix, who two years ago teamed up with influencer Sophia Roe to create The Garment, a label with a more traditional take on Scandi style, which now looks new again. The pair, who have focused on tomboy tailoring and knitwear in earlier collections, reworked those preoccupations in neo-minimal and of-the-moment ways at their first runway presentation. The consistency of palette and aesthetic is deliberate, the idea is to evolve the brand so that pieces from different seasons can work together. “Sustainable for me is also keeping your clothes,” noted Eskildsen. The Garment carbon-offsets its production and strives to work with responsible fabrics.
The show opened with a bang: a black cropped tailored jacket, a white shirt cut to the midriff, a gray knit skirt with spring 2022 Miu Miu proportions, black opaque tights, and vintage shoes. There were cropped school-boy jackets in tweed, silk blouses with bold shoulders, and pin-stripe pants cut to expose a bit of the hip-bone. For the most part it was dressy and easy in equal proportions, which speaks to the mood of the moment and the desire for ease with polish.
There’s a familiarity to The Garment that’s comforting; it’s not vintage but, says Eskildsen, a kind of slow fashion. “It’s made from old souls, even though we have an age difference, Sophia and I. I actually was young in the 1990 and Sophia wasn’t born yet. I remember Kate Moss, Prada, and minimalism, so I never really got over it.”
The Garment’s fall collection was undeniably Prada-esque, but something else was at work here, namely the reframing of the ’90s through the double lenses of nostalgia and anemoia (a longing for a time you didn’t know) and within the framework of Scandinavian minimalism. As thought provoking as that may be, fashion’s a material world, and those hip slung trousers and cropped tweed jackets are sure to speak directly to the heart and its desires.
For all the latest fasion News Click Here
