IMAGES James Cochrane, courtesy of Copenhagen Fashion Week
From immersive runway worlds to intimate showroom appointments, AW26 at Copenhagen Fashion Week held strong on the belief that sustainability and imagination don’t have to exist at opposite ends of the style spectrum.
Between a packed show schedule, a must-stop visit to CIFF, and many moments celebrating performance, protest and personal style, these were the collections that stayed with us.
OpéraSPORT brought nocturnal elegance
Titled Venice by Night, for AW26 OpéraSPORT took us on a trip through the Italian hotspot after hours. Inspired by the city’s moonlit canals, sculptural architecture, and the poetic writings of Danish writer and poet H.C. Andersen, the collection captured the infamous destination suspended between water and light. Liquid recycled satins replaced spectacle with shimmering opulence, while dusk-toned palettes of chocolate fused with pale pinks proved that intimacy hides amongst the city’s shadowed corners. Elsewhere, layers of lace, ruffles, and softly draped satin echoed the faded grandeur of Venetian palazzos.
Grounded in OpéraSPORT’s commitment to recycled and organic materials, Venice by Night wasn’t a tourist postcard, but rather a love letter to contrast, and a city forever caught between shadow and light, nostalgia and modernity.
Fine Chaos staged a dystopian awakening
Fine Chaos returned to CIFF for AW26 with ARA SOLIS, a fully immersive runway experience set in the year 2075. Unfolding inside was an authoritarian corporate city at the centre of the brand’s expanding universe. The show staged a tightly controlled environment where everyone coexisted under 24/7 surveillance. Through choreographed movement and performance, the runway positioned the audience as witnesses, using speculative near-future fiction to mirror contemporary anxieties around power, control, and collective vulnerability.
AW26 signalled a shift in Fine Chaos’ product direction, reaffirming a commitment to experimental fashion shaped by a deconstructive, underground lens. Distressed surfaces, nervous velour textures, and refined material treatments defined silhouettes that felt fragile yet defiant.
As well as Fine Chaos’ expanded CIFF presence, the co-created space dissolved the divide between runway, trade, and collective creative practice.
Bonnetje deconstructed tailoring into unexpected silhouettes
Copenhagen-based fashion label Bonnetje was known for its precise reassembling of discarded tailoring, most notably traditional suiting. For AW26, design duo Anna Myntekær and Yoko Maja Rahbek pushed this practice even further: proportions slipped, and details repeated as if the garments were still evolving. Shirt cuffs were reimagined into a red-carpet-worthy gown, white shirt collars were assembled into a sculptural corset top, and deadstock tank tops were transformed into a maxi dress.
Titled Cadavre Exquis, the collection borrowed its name from the surrealist game centred on fragmentation, collective authorship, and mutual trust, and marked the label’s third and final season in the CPHFW NEWTALENT scheme. “It’s a small collection, only twelve looks, but I’m so happy with it,” Myntekær shared at the brand’s CIFF showroom following the presentation. It may be small, but for Bonnetje, it felt like the beginning of something bigger.
Paolina Russo redesigned the outsider’s uniform
Paolina Russo’s AW26 show felt less like a presentation and more like the start of term, the kind where no one quite knows the rules yet. Staged inside the French Embassy at Thott Palace, WAYFOUND leaned into the swirl of nerves, excitement and possibility of a new school. The collection reimagined these codes through a distinctly on-brand lens: cropped knitwear, playful denim and graphic badges nodded to uniforms, but customised as if by your most rebellious classmate. Knit silhouettes stretched, clashed and layered, while cords and denim were softened with hand-drawn motifs and unexpected colour, worthy of a trip to the Headmistress’s office.
Knitwear remained at the heart of the collection, developed through ongoing collaboration with Maison Anaychay and artisan communities in Peru, reinforcing the brand’s commitment to craft, regeneration and locally sourced fibres. Elsewhere, modular layers and sport-inflected details grounded the looks in everyday wearability, styled with preview Nike Shox silhouettes via Zalando, the sponsors of the prestigious Visionary award the brand won back in SS24.
A live piano performance by OKLOU made for the stand-out moment from the season, heightening the intimacy of the space as the alt-pop musician weaved effortlessly through models. Rather than simply replicating nostalgia, WAYFOUND captured a more specific memory: the formative moments in adolescence when standing out from the pack stops feeling awkward or embarrassing, and starts to feel like finding yourself.
Stine Goya invited guests in
Presented from her Copenhagen HQ, Stine Goya’s AW26 collection Here You Are centred on a quietly powerful idea: showing up exactly as yourself, and allowing others the space to do the same. Built around three personas – the Sentimental Individualist, the Layered Achiever and the Uniform Perfectionist – the collection embraced contradiction as a form of self-knowledge. Rather than prescribing identity, the clothes offered versatility.
A nuanced colour journey moved from soft butter creams and sky blues into richer aubergines, olives and wine reds, punctuated by unexpected citrus brights. Tactility played a key role, with velvets, devoré, silk blends, tailoring and responsible knits grounding the collection in comfort as much as expression. Here You Are felt intimate rather than declarative, and was a reminder that confidence doesn’t always need to announce itself, and that self-expression can be both gentle and deliberate.
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