Copenhagen Fashion Week officially begins today, unleashing its most forward-thinking season yet. Alongside returning Nordic icons such as Cecilie Bahnsen and Ranra, this edition places a refined spotlight on emerging visionaries via the CPHFW New Talent program. Among them, three carefully selected One To Watch brands are commanding attention: Stem, Taus, and Kettel Atelier, each taking their own considered approach to contemporary design.
Below, BRICKS meets the Ones To Watch designers ahead of their CPHFW presentations.
Kettel Atelier
Founded by Laura Tønder and based between Mallorca and Copenhagen, Kettel Atelier brings a quietly radical approach to contemporary fashion. Known for one-off pieces crafted from vintage home linens and deadstock materials, the brand reimagines the domestic as deeply personal and poetic. Each garment feels like a memory made wearable – intimate, tactile, and deliberately slow – offering a counterpoint to trend-driven cycles with a thoughtful, almost folkloric sensibility.
What were your earliest design inspirations?
I was always drawing, then it started to become sketching of princesses and dolls, then later making clothes from my dolls to then sewing clothes for myself. But I wasn’t sure I had the talent to do it as a career, I was never really confident about it. So I considered studying engineering, but took a gap year before applying to do a course in fashion design and ended up applying to fashion school.
How would you describe your design aesthetic in your own words?
Very feminine, vintage inspired, bohemian and summery. I want women to feel comfortable and beautiful in my designs, and very sexy! Many women tell me how sexy my pieces are, but in a very elegant and sophisticated way.
What’s one piece you’ve made that you feel summarises your label, and why?
The handkerchief dress, which I have now made in hundreds of versions. As these one of a kind dresses are made from vintage sourced lace, every style is unique but all in the same upcycled concept.
Can you describe your design process?
For me it all starts with sourcing the materials, I love the tactility and fall in love with my hands and eyes, and then I imagine the designs I can create from it.
Are there any materials that are significant in your work?
The crochet doilies, tablecloths and lace, it must be.
I would love to show everyone how grunge I feel the Kettel woman also is, more vamp, more dirty. But I also love how so many resonate with Kettel with their important days, and collaborate with me on their custom wedding outfit.
Laura Tønder, Kettel Atelier
How would you like to see your brand develop and how are you approaching this?
I would love to show everyone how grunge I feel the Kettel woman also is, more vamp, more dirty. But I also love how so many resonate with Kettel with their important days, and collaborate with me on their custom wedding outfit. My dream would be to make a wedding dress for Kate Moss where we wear it with wellies and the hem of the dress gets dirty. Iconic!
What’s one piece of advice you would tell other emerging designers getting started in the fashion industry right now?
Try it out, and try not to overthink it. I started by producing all myself, instead of investing in setting up a big production from day one – this allowed me to really connect with my first customers and build an audience before expanding and producing bigger drops/collections.
Knowing that women resonate with our designs on the other side of the globe is so damn cool – I pinch myself every time.
Laura Tønder, Kettel Atelier
What are you listening to while you’re working in your studio?
Since we are based in Mallorca, Spain I either listen to my boyfriend’s reggaeton like Bad Bunny, Quevedo and Delaossa, but I also love listening to podcasts in Danish to feel like I don’t “lose my mother tongue” after spending the past 5 years in Spain.
What’s been the most exciting or memorable moment so far since launching your label?
Every single one of the wedding or event dresses we have made to order, I feel like I have been invited into such an intimate part of their lives by making a dress for these events. Also, every time we launch a drop and we see directly how we from every time get new customers from around the world. Knowing that women resonate with our designs on the other side of the globe is so damn cool – I pinch myself every time.
Taus
Taus, the creative partnership of Danish Freyja Taus and Finnish Juho Lehiö, approaches fashion as a dialogue between body, memory, and material. Rooted in ready-to-wear but shaped by demi-couture values, their work drapes with intention — quiet, sculptural, and emotionally attuned. There’s a sense of stillness in their silhouettes, a reverence for form and feeling that resists the rush of seasonal noise. With each collection, Taus crafts a language of restraint that feels both deeply current and timeless.
What were your earliest design inspiration?
Freyja: I realised very early in life the power clothing has in expressing identity and artistic intent. When I was six, I would always dress myself before school, and the look would change depending on my mood. That really became the foundation for why I eventually ended up studying fashion. As a trans woman, a lot of my practice has been about exploring and justifying my own identity through fashion and making clothes. It was a kind of escapism, a way to create my own utopia; a fantasy world that didn’t judge me for who I am.
How would you describe your design aesthetic in your own words?
We’d say Taus is a mixture of great craftsmanship, an appreciation of the past to build the future, and pieces made to be loved and worn — with a hint of subversion and darkness. We often look at archives, either personal or historical, to build the basis of our designs, but we want to make sure they’re wearable, adaptable, and modern nonetheless.
As a trans woman, a lot of my practice has been about exploring and justifying my own identity through fashion and making clothes. It was a kind of escapism, a way to create my own utopia; a fantasy world that didn’t judge me for who I am.
Freyja Taus
What’s one piece you’ve made that you feel summarises your label, and why?
So far, one of our absolute favourite pieces is a leather top from our AW25 collection. It’s a sleeveless top adorned with hand-cut and molded leather pieces that resemble feathers. It combines our appreciation for craftsmanship and quality with our aesthetic vision, so it feels very “Taus” in its essence.
Can you describe your design process?
We change our way of working depending on the season and project. Sometimes we might start with garments we upcycle, sometimes with a material, or with references — like movies, characters, people from the past, or a more conceptual idea. For SS26, we started by referencing women from the past we deeply admire, like Little Edie and Sinéad O’Connor.
Are there any materials that are significant in your work?
Upcycled textiles are a crucial part of the Taus DNA — ranging from vintage garments to household textiles. In addition, we try to work with high-quality natural materials like wool and silk, or fabrics like Tencel or Lyocell. The materiality has to feel real for the pieces we create, which is why we often end up using more raw materials like unwashed denim.
How would you like to see your brand develop, and how are you approaching this?
We’d love to enhance the craftsmanship aspect even further — both by having more time to create intricate pieces in our Copenhagen studio, and by collaborating with artisans who are masters of their own craft. We also hope to see more people wearing Taus soon, since at the end of the day, we create pieces that are meant to be worn and lived in.
What’s one piece of advice you would tell other emerging designers getting started in the fashion industry right now?
Take your time. If possible, save some money upfront to help with the massive costs, and surround yourself with people who have different skill sets than you. We live in a rushed world, and it can feel like everything has to happen immediately or it’s doomed to fail – but we don’t believe that’s true. Great things take time.
We were aware there would be financial challenges, but we didn’t fully grasp the scale until we were deep into it. Neither of us comes from money or had savings to back us up, and that’s still a big limitation to our growth.
Also, building a functioning fashion brand is nearly impossible to do alone – it really does take at least a small village. We’ve benefited from having different backgrounds and strengths, balancing artistic vision with commercial thinking, and approaching visuals and communication in complementary ways.
Looking back, we kind of fell into starting the brand after being asked to join CPHFW’s NEWTALENT showroom, represented by Alpha a few seasons back. If we could do it over, we probably would’ve taken more time to develop the brand beforehand — and ideally, saved some money to run things more smoothly. But also the moment is rarely ‘’right’’, so at some point you just have to go for it. Enjoy the ride, and ask for help.
We live in a rushed world, and it can feel like everything has to happen immediately or it’s doomed to fail – but we don’t believe that’s true. Great things take time.
Freyja Taus
What are you listening to while you’re working in your studio?
Lately, we’ve been listening to the cover of ‘Teardrop’ by Sega Bodega, Lafawndah and KUKII, ‘Every Girl You’ve Ever Loved’ by Miley Cyrus and Naomi Campbell, ‘Bitches Like Me” by Six Sex and MCR-T, ‘Niin Aikaisin’ by Anki, and ‘Crystalline’ by Björk and Omar Souleyman. In general, music is very important to both of us – our taste goes from old Finnish and Danish classics to hyper-pop and everything in between.
What’s been the most exciting or memorable moment so far since launching your label?
We’d say two moments stand out. First, our debut show during the AW25 edition of CPHFW, held at Designmuseum Danmark — a special place, especially for Freyja, since one of her early works is part of their permanent exhibition.
The second moment happened more recently: we received our first order from someone we have no personal connection to. Until then, most people buying into the brand were people from our community. It felt deeply meaningful that someone out there connected with the Taus vision enough to invest in it.
Stem
Stem, the brainchild of designer and textile researcher Sarah Brunnhuber, is built quite literally from the thread up. Known for her zero-waste weaving system, the brand transforms the mechanics of the loom into garments that feel both architectural and alive. Shapes emerge from process, not pattern; fringed, layered, and textured with deliberate imperfection. Stem isn’t just designing clothes, it’s rethinking how they’re made, offering a quiet but radical blueprint for fashion’s future.
What were your earliest inspirations?
My approach to clothing is from a textile and production perspective and I consider Stem a purpose driven brand- so my drive to practice fashion design came in my early twenties when my eyes were opened up to the problems in the industry. But clothing has played a major role in my life for as long as I can remember and I’ve been weaving since my school days.
How would you describe your design aesthetic in your own words?
Key words are: waste reduction, form follows technique, production story
What’s one piece you’ve made that you feel summarises your label, and why?
The ‘Elastic Wool Dress’: it’s an expression of Stem’s values, combining material and technical research, my zero-waste production technique, natural materials, and inclusive sizing. I have managed to industrialise this piece for the collection. Stretchy garments up until now have either been knitted or contain synthetics, while these woven pieces are made of 100% wool. To give them ‘elasticity’, the weft yarns have been processed using a twisting technique on HILO’s spinning machines. To capture the elasticity of the yarn, the garments have been woven using the ‘waffle’ weave structure.
The yarn itself will also be a Stem product, so others can create natural, mono material stretchy garments.
Stem’s mission is to make the fashion and textile industry a less wasteful one, to foster a spirit of collaboration within the industry, to share and emphasise the production process, and to bridge craft and industry. This heavily impacts every design decision I make.
Sarah Brunnhuber, Stem
Can you describe your design process?
I start every collection at the loom or look at old weaving samples, my own fabric collection and other woven objects or textile techniques I can translate into weave.I’m also collecting books about Danish textiles so have been looking at a lot of those.
Stem’s mission is to make the fashion and textile industry a less wasteful one, to foster a spirit of collaboration within the industry, to share and emphasise the production process, and to bridge craft and industry. This heavily impacts every design decision I make.
Weaving is my chosen language and my design process is led by loom-based experimentation, pushing the boundaries of this ancient craft and creating new handcraft processes. Another important aspect to my work is material innovation (e.g. The Elastic Wool), with new garment designs highlighting each of these novel aspects. The resulting garments are therefore an expression of the techniques I use and develop: ‘Form follows technique’.
Are there any materials that are significant in your work?
I only work with natural, woven, mono materials – and Stem’s zero-waste production technique is at the core of the brand. Our zero-waste production system eliminates cutting waste: Pattern pieces are woven directly on the loom with a loose weave structure in between. Using a specific cutting technique, these loosely woven areas unravel into fringes that line the seams of all garments, becoming part of the design and ultimately using the entire fabric.
Up until now, everything has been made using Stem’s woven technique. After a few years of experimenting, I have collected a small amount of off-cuts and scrap fabrics and so have started to look into ways of using existing fabrics and elevating up cycling techniques. I’m generally interested in fabric waste streams, and so for this collection, we have made a few showpieces using Stem fabric scraps.
How would you like to see your brand develop and how are you approaching this?
Alongside the brand, I am also working to open a weaving mill here in Denmark. It’s a long term project but thanks to support from the Wessel & Vett Fashion Prize and the Innovation Fund Denmark, the ‘Knowledge Gathering Phase’ has begun! I’m working together with 19 industry experts to map out the set up for the mill that will make it most impactful.
There is currently no weaving mill for the fashion industry in Denmark, and I am also well aware that as an industry we need to produce at least 75% less to reach our climate goals. This feels impossible with the current systems in place, so Stem Mill will tackle these challenges head on – I’m trying to see if we can efficiently produce less.
Alongside the brand, I am also working to open a weaving mill here in Denmark… There is currently no weaving mill for the fashion industry in Denmark, and I am also well aware that as an industry we need to produce at least 75% less to reach our climate goals. This feels impossible with the current systems in place, so Stem Mill will tackle these challenges head on – I’m trying to see if we can efficiently produce less.
Sarah Brunnhuber, Stem
What’s one piece of advice you would tell other emerging designers getting started in the fashion industry right now?
Look deeper into production. Try to find out where your fabrics and other materials are coming from – we have a responsibility!
What song are you listening to while you’re working in your studio?
Generally, I work in silence. Otherwise, I find it difficult to think clearly, unless I’m doing a repetitive task. I’ve been untangling an old warp from a mill, so I have been listening to a lot of Fashion Neurosis episodes while doing that.
What’s been the most exciting or memorable moment so far since launching your label?
Winning the Wessel and Vett Fashion Prize and showing my work at the V&A museum in May. Also, every time a new fabric sample arrives!
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