If Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince could find a rose on the moon, why shouldn’t Rolf Ekroth be able to make them bloom in an indoor skate park? That’s just what the Finnish designer did for his runway debut as part of the New Talent program at Copenhagen Fashion Week.
Ekroth is no stranger to thorns—he reports that the investment company he was working with declared bankruptcy in the middle of the making of this collection—but he continues to persevere. On the soundtrack to the show was “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” which was a neat summation of the designer’s realization that “life hasn’t promised me anything, and I shouldn’t miss my ’90s teenage years and try always try to achieve things that are not there; I should be happy with where I am.” This also sounds like a bit of Finnish stoicism.
There was both a sense of ordered restraint in the collection and a colorful exuberance. Though lineup was called Missing, it answered many wants. Though the designer was thinking of his own family across generations—“[I’m] always missing the ’90s; my parents are missing the late ’60s/early ’70s, and then my grandma is missing the 1930s”—the mix of references felt modern. Headscarves and aprons, inspired by rural Scandinavian farm wear, were transformed into gender-free items that read as fashionable utilitarian, and brown and orange florals had a grunge-meets-camping vibe.
Ekroth’s runway debut was an amalgam of the work he has been doing since launching his label. This was the first time many in the audience were exposed to the brand, and for those that knew it better, this approach reinforced core elements of the designer’s personal lexicon, such things as sport and outdoor references, sleeping bag pieces, prints, hairy textures, badges, and handcraft. This season that came in the form of pendant friendship bracelets, a rose-patterned macrame dress, and a rope-net suit overlay, in which Ekroth inserted real roses. The bright reds in the lineup, though likely intended to reference the flower, could check the tomato girl (or) boy summer box as well.
