There was a sense of joy in the air at Copenhagen Fashion Week’s S/S 2025 edition, brought on by bright sunny skies, dips in the sea, endless cardamom buns and a packed schedule of exciting runway shows and presentations to take in.
The roster was fuller than usual this season, thanks to CPHFW’s new ‘One to Watch’ scheme, which has offered support and guidance to three promising young labels (Bonnetje, Sól Hansdóttir and Stem) who each hope to change the face of Scandinavian fashion in their unique way. The longstanding CPHFW NEWTALENT program also returned for S/S 2025, an initiative that provides monetary support for three to five new designers per season. This year, those designers were Alectra Rothschild/Masculina, Berner Kühl, Rolf Ekroth, and Stamm, Frederik Taus (represented by ALPHA) and Sofia Ilmonen (represented by Fashion in Helsinki).
In addition to CPHFW’s impressive emphasis on sustainability – a longstanding hallmark of the event – plenty of resources were poured into supporting other emerging talents. This made for a far more diverse and inspiring set of runway shows in comparison to some of the other major fashion weeks around the globe. From a new under-the-radar menswear label to covetable zero-waste knits, these are the five new brands from Copenhagen Fashion Week S/S 2025 that you need to know. Skål!
Copenhagen Fashion Week S/S 2025: the emerging designers to know
Bonnetje
There was a lot of buzz around Bonnetje, a young label founded by Anna Myntekær and Yoko Maja Hansen in 2021, in Copenhagen. Showing as part of ‘One to Watch’, the design duo put on a presentation-slash-runway-show that embodied the energy of rushing off to the airport. It explored ‘the beauty of dressing’, through how we get ready in a hurry, or while in transit. (We might toss on wrinkled clothes, or accidentally mismatch buttons on a jacket, perhaps). Here, Bonnetje upcycled old suits, dress shirts and tailored pieces into funnel neck blouses, a sheer shift dress with belted closure and even a gown of tied jacket sleeves, all relying on an exciting sense of play, so often missed in fashion. A major highlight was the handbags – pinstriped baguettes and delicate shoulder bags reimagined from old Italian suiting – made in collaboration with Swedish luxury brand, VENCZEL.
Stem
In a charming storefront in central Copenhagen, Sarah Brunnhuber presented her third collection – ‘Edition 3’ – for her brand Stem, which pushes the boundaries of handicraft and weaving, all while experimenting with technique and form. Models in deliciously frayed tanks, stitched polos and rolled ruffled tie skirts rotated throughout the space periodically to show off Stem’s zero-waste knits and their trailing natural fibres. To create the collection's standout skirts in cream and pale Danish blue, Brunnhuber spent nearly two years developing a signature ‘pulling’ technique with assistant Mathilde Mortens in a mill in Bergamo, Italy. Garments were then further animated through hours of pulling and knotting back in Brunnhuber’s Copenhagen studio. The resulting pieces are not only a window into the production process – and a sustainable one at that – but covetable and wearable in their own right.
Nicklas Skovgaard
Though not exactly a new addition to CPHFW – this season marks Nicklas Skovgaard’s third appearance on the official schedule – we’d be remiss not to mention his stellar S/S 2025 collection, which explores the life of his mother, Annie, during the time she was turning 30 (the same age Skovgaard will turn this year). The designer took over an art gallery, mounting lookbook images and old photos of his mom depicting how she’d dress in the 1990s for holidays, dinner parties and even the aerobics classes she taught. A cast of models, including performance artist and frequent collaborator, Britt Liberg, twirled through the space in various states of dress. Named ‘Collection 09’, the designer tapped into 1980s silhouettes once more, layering juxtaposed fabrics and experimenting with unexpected cuts, all the while drawing inspiration from 17th-century trompe L’oeil paintings by Dutch painter Cornelius Norbertus Gijsbrechts. After all, there’s truly no better way to ’wear’ Nicklas Skovgaard’s signature drop waist dresses than by holding them up to oneself and striking a pose.
Berner Kühl
There’s certainly no shortage of Scandinavian menswear brands putting forth aspirational minimalism in the form of everyday, staple garments, but Berner Kühl upped the ante with its second-ever runway show. The S/S 2025 outing comes at a time of major growth for the label – the opening of their concept store in Copenhagen, for one – and sees designer Frederik Berner Kühl focusing on fabrication and construction. From lightweight, silky button-ups that glimmered in the brightly lit space, to cheeky, sheer knits and sharp jackets with coated cuffs and collars, the beauty was in the details.
Jade Cropper
This season also marked the exciting return of Swedish designer Jade Cropper to Copenhagen, bringing a much-needed edge to S/S 2025’s festivities. In a dark warehouse with sand covering the floor, Cropper’s striking silhouettes were front and centre. Exploring the ‘limitlessness’ of fashion, each garment was designed to be versatile and completely transformable, whether that be a leather jacket that converted into a bag or a hook-and-eye jersey dress that, with a few modifications, became a low-waisted skirt. According to the show notes, the designer kept returning to the idea of snakes throughout the design process – seen literally in a bespoke red printed hoodie and the texture of the recycled leather – but more importantly, their symbolism, with snakes representing rebirth, female empowerment and the cyclical nature of renewal.
