So palpable were the emotions and power of Anne Sofie Madsen’s fall show that as I walked out of the venue a cartoon “Pow!” was on repeat in my head. The team knocked it out of the ballpark with a collection that spoke to the moment—and to the value of experience. Madsen worked for John Galliano at Christian Dior and with Alexander McQueen before starting her own business, which she ran from 2011-2017 and rekindled for fall 2025. Caroline Clante joined the company the following season. That the buzz and influence of the label is increasing is evidenced by copycatting in other cities.
Unlike visuals and techniques, context cannot be appropriated, and much of the impact of the fall collection came from its engagement with the current events. (With Greenland being an autonomous part of the Kingdom of Denmark, the fraught political situation is playing out close to home, in all senses.) “I have to say that I do feel that these diminished horizons make creation a little less tempting, but I do also believe that even a modest attempt to try to put something beautiful into the world and do something different should have a place,” Madsen said.
With local band Wedding playing live and loud, Madsen and Clante’s show acted like a kind of cleansing ritual. “We called the collection Ghostly Matters, and I think that it came from this idea that the present is haunted by futures that we promised, but we can no longer believe in,” said Madsen, who added that the idea was to exorcise the ghosts and their power over us by materializing them. And so the show opened with a semi-sheer, broad-shouldered dress, which differed from similar ones shown for spring because it revealed pads at the hips, breasts, and shoulders. As the model had a kind of warrior aspect with her flowing hair and strappy boots from Madsen’s outstanding collaboration with Uggs, this could be read as soft armor. The designer explained that she became fascinated with shapewear because “it’s smooth. It compresses and conceals, but at the same time it reveals what it’s supposed to hide, and it’s somehow neither a body nor a garment—it’s a space in between. And I think this is also where you find the ghosts, in these in-between spaces.”
Despite the delicacy of the opening look, and others with jewelry trapped under sheer layers, this wasn’t an especially wispy collection. The designer draped solid wool scarves into fringed dresses and revisited the duffle coat, also seen in the fall 2025 collection. To Madsen, these utilitarian coats, once exclusively menswear, are associated with both rebels and scholars. (They were also worn by British soldiers in WWII.)
Romance entered in the form of roses—there were fabric ones and a print created by the Swedish spray artist Solas. Yet Madsen wasn’t thinking about your typical flower, rather she had Danish elves—elver—in mind. “I have a feeling that I was told when I was a child that in Danish folklore roses are the sign of ghosts. Elver are sort of uncanny human creatures, but they’re made out of fog and morning dew and dust and the smell of roses. They’re only princesses. They’re all girls and they’re very sort of seductive.” This backstory changes how one might read the finale, when all the models came out at once. Maybe they weren’t a girl army, but a princess posse. In any case, much like roses, they convincingly linked power and prettiness.
