Among the most anticipated shows at Copenhagen Fashion Week this season is the debut of Nicklas Skovgaard. Born on the island of Funen, this 28-year-old Dane fell into fashion haphazardly and quickly found his footing despite never setting out to launch a brand.
Skovgaard’s real-life tale reads like something made by Disney or Hans Christian Andersen. One summer while vacationing with his partner, he found a children’s loom in a thrift shop and brought it home to play. He had so much fun that he bought a bigger loom at auction. It arrived packed with hay, wrapped in newspapers from 1939, and with all of its parts bearing its past owner’s handwritten name: Anna Petersen. He used it to make textiles, piecing them together into bonnets and simple garments. His little head coverings fasten under the chin and have the unexpectedly magical effect of transforming their wearers into figures from Old Masters paintings.
Scroll through Skovgaard’s Instagram, and you’ll find images of thrift-store finds and pastries, rococo furniture and a simple straw broom, a photograph by Sofia Coppola and paintings by Vilhelm Hammershøi. The intersections of old and new, rustic and fantastical, animate the designer’s work, which doesn’t neatly fit into a box. Over the past few years, he’s arrived at an individualistic style that’s largely defined by volume and a long line. He tends toward an extended or drop waist or focuses on a high crop, particularly for jackets that share proportions with the spencers worn by Jane Austen heroines. He favors wool and cotton for his handcrafted fabrics—which he combines with textures from store-bought or upcycled materials, most of them industrially made—and he often spins found fabrics into one-offs that inspire looks that can go into production. Both will be included in his debut.
Without going into details, Skovgaard says that he’ll do a runway presentation and that he’s keen to make the experience as personal as the clothes are. “This is my first show, so of course I want it to be as I want it to be. You need to step in and be like, Okay, this is the world of Skovgaard, somehow. I would be happy if someone would like to buy the stuff or wants to write about it, but in the end it’s like we are doing something together that feels like the right thing for me to do for this first show.”
Don’t expect minimalist designs: “Baroque’n’roll” and “classy, cozy chic” are two ways Skovgaard has referred to his aesthetic. His dresses combine a sense of wonder and discovery with a real-world appeal, which is to an extent due to the way he works with his great friend Anna Ravn Lei. The two met 10 years ago when they both moved to Copenhagen, but they were already virtually connected through their fashion blogs. “We were that young generation of bloggers growing up in the countryside and being interested in fashion and [living] in a place where you could buy a magazine,” the designer says. He collected his thoughts under the title My Clothing Blog, while Lei and her friend the photographer Claudia Vega were known as Oculaire.
These days Lei works in production—naturally, she’s putting Skovgaard’s show together—but she plays an integral part in Skovgaard’s work right from the start. “In the beginning it was like, ‘Let’s meet for dinner’ and she came to the studio before we were going out and then I would try something on her before we left,” explains the designer. “It felt like a natural way of progressing because she’s a really good friend. [Also showing] my work can be very vulnerable, but when I’m with Anna, there aren’t many boundaries; it’s like a very open space to be working in.”
Asked to describe Lei’s personal style, the word Skovgaard chooses is “eclectic.” Among their friend group the phrase “Anna could really be wearing this” is often thrown around and it translates, in part, to her penchant for wearing statement pieces in a relaxed way. As for Lei’s take on Skovgaard, she says, “The best way to describe it is authentic. I know that’s like a big fluffy word, but it’s because of how this started—it wasn’t like Nicklas came and had a big vision and was like, I’m going to start a fashion brand. It feels like it all just comes from his heart.” Skovgaard has said that Madonna’s 2005 album Confessions on the Dance Floor is a source of inspiration, but for me Lei’s words cued the lyrics from the singer’s 1984 hit: “Gonna dress you up in my love.”
